Group Admins
Description
We aim to achieve this by:
- Measuring the effectiveness of learning designs;
- Identify patterns which evidence improved learning experiences;
- Share effective learning designs, or patterns, via a library;
- Improve quality with evidence-based learning designs.
Courses on FutureLearn follow an online social learning pedagogy but that doesn’t automatically negate the reuse of one learning design into other domains or contexts. Our foundation of design for learning is based on building around six defined learning types (Laurillard, 2013) which are used across a range of learning design approaches (Ulster 2013, UCL 2017, Learning Designer 2017) and are universal in their application:
- Acquire
- Produce
- Collaborate
- Practice
- Investigate
- Discuss
We believe that to incorporate learning types directly into the design process we can then add them to course metadata. Our hypothesis is this will result in the capacity for measurement against comparable data points captured throughout the life of the course, which reflect original design decisions. This might include measuring retention; progress; completion; social interaction and assessment.
If our hypothesis is true then is this should lead to discovering best practice, by looking for patterns, that may solve problems which recur across different domains (Bergin et al., 2012). This should withstand different learning environments; where the core design for learning can be used in other settings. This aligns well to the concept of Pedagogical Patterns (ibid) and informed by a design science for learning (Laurillard, 2013). Capitalising on the massive nature of our platform; we hope to identify many sequences, or patterns, which can become reusable combinations suitable for addition to a library of learning design for uses in multiple contexts.
Attendees to this session will gain insight into how we’re aligning approaches to learning design with learning types and evaluation to shape our thinking and direction. We will demonstrate how using learning types have been instrumental into our conversations for learning across various domains. We will provide examples of how these have been used to design learning experiences on our platform and how this is informing our plans for incorporation into our platform. However the area is wider than this and we want to outline how the work can be shared back to the wider community and curate research outputs which already go beyond the FutureLearn partnership.
The intention is to generate discussion within the ALT-C community on technical developments and research plans to gather feedback and debate our approach. This is not purely for FutureLearn partners and will be universal enough to be of interest to those beyond, hence the submission to the ALT-C conference on scaling up institutional learning technologies.
References
Bergin, J., Eckstein, J., Volter, M., Sipos, M., Wallingford, E., Marquardt, K., … & Manns, M. L. (2012). Pedagogical patterns: advice for educators. Joseph Bergin Software Tools.
Hollands, F. M., & Tirthali, D. (2014). MOOCs: Expectations and Reality. Full Report. Online Submission.
Laurillard, D. (2013). Teaching as a design science: Building pedagogical patterns for learning and technology. Routledge.
Learning Designer (2017). Learning Designer Tool. Last accessed 16 March 2017 from http://www.learningdesigner.org
UCL (2017). Arena, Blended, Connected Learning Design (ABC LD). Last accessed 16 March 2017 from http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/abc-ld/
Ulster (2013). Viewpoints Resources. University of Ulster Curriculum Design Workshop Resources. Last accessed 16 March 2017 from http://wiki.ulster.ac.uk/display/VPR/Home
