Conole
Conole
Conole
Abstract
Designing for learning is arguably the key challenge facing education today; new technologies offer a
plethora of ways in which learners can interact with rich multimedia, communicate and collaborate.
Despite this teachers lack the necessary digital literacy skills to make effective design decisions that
are pedagogically informed and make appropriate use of technologies. Learning Design has emerged
in the last ten years as a means of addressing this, by providing teachers with guidance and support
for their design practices. Learning Design is predicated on three aspects: guidance, visualisation and
sharing. The paper will describe the development and evaluation of a new framework for Learning
Design, the 7Cs of Learning Design. The framework consists of the following elements:
Conceptualise (i.e. what are you designing and why, who are you designing for?),
Capture (in terms of capturing resources to be used and activities around Learner Generated Content),
Communicate (mechanisms to foster communication), Collaborate (mechanisms to foster
collaboration), Consider (activities to promote reflection and enable assessment), Combine
(combining the activities to give a holistic overview of the design and associated learning pathways),
and Consolidate (in terms of running the design in a real learning context, evaluating, refining and
sharing the design). The paper will describe the framework and how it can be used, along with an
evaluation of its application in practice. It will conclude by contextualising this work within recent
broader developments in the field. The framework can be used by individual teacher or with groups
of teachers co-designing learning interventions. The latter has been effectively delivered in a series of
workshops we have run over the past year.
Keywords
Learning Design, The 7Cs of Learning Design framework, JISC-funded SPEED project, workshops,
evaluation, METIS, Larnaca Declaration on Learning Design, Integrated Learning Design
Environment (ILDE)
Introduction
• New technologies offer a wealth of ways in which learners can interact with rich multimedia, communicate
and collaborate. Despite this teachers lack the necessary digital literacy skills (Jenkins, 2009) to make
informed choices about appropriate and effective use of technologies. Learning Design research has
emerged in the last ten years as a means of addressing this. This paper will begin with an overview of some
of the key characteristics of new technologies and the ways in which they can facilitate different
pedagogical approaches. It will argue that designing for learning is the key challenge facing education today
(Conole, 2013a) and will introduce Learning Design as an approach to help teachers make more informed
design decisions. It will describe the 7Cs of Learning Design framework as a means of achieving this, along
with some of the evaluation data we have gathered on its use in practice. We have found that this approach
helps guide teachers’ design practice and enables them to think beyond content to the activities the learners
are engaged with, as well as the overall learner experience. It will conclude by contextualising this
framework in the broader research on Learning Design and some of the current activities in the field. This
paper addresses the fourth of the conference themes: Design. In terms of the symposium, the paper
addresses the question: ‘How can the design process and design outcomes be captured and represented, so
that they can be shared, repurposed and reused (tools, techniques, patterns)?’ It will describe some of the
visual representations developed as part of the 7Cs framework to help make the design process more
explicit and sharable.
1
See for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38
2
The notion of openness is discussed in more detail in Chapter 11
Despite the clear potential of technologies to support learning there is a gap between the rhetoric and reality;
most LMSs are being used as content repository and there is little evidence of harnessing the communicative
and collaborative affordances of technologies (Conole 2013). Learning Design has emerged as a means of
addressing this by providing practitioners with the guidance and support they need to harness the potential of
technologies. It can also be used by teams of practitioners to co-design learning interventions.
1. Conceptualise: What is the vision for the learning intervention, who is it being designed for, what is the
essence of the intervention, what pedagogical approaches are used?
2. Capture: What Open Educational Resources are being used and what other resources need to be developed?
3. Create: What is the nature of the learning intervention the learners will engage with? What kinds of learning
activities will the learners engage with?
4. Communicate: What types of communication will the learners be using?
5. Collaboration: What types of collaboration will be learners be doing?
6. Consider: What forms of reflection and demonstration of learning are includes? Are the learning outcomes
mapped to the activities and assessment elements of the learning intervention?
7. Consolidate: How effective is the design? Do the different elements of the design work together?
3
http://ouldi.open.ac.uk
• Principles: What is the essence of the course, what are the core principles? So for example cultural or
aesthetic aspects may be important, the intervention may have a practical focus or be about applying
theory to practice, it may be based on a professional community of peers or it might be important that
the intervention includes elements of serendipity.
• Pedagogical approaches: What pedagogies are involved? For example is the intervention based on
constructivist principles, is it problem or inquiry-based?
• Guidance and support: What guidance and support are provided? For example in terms of a website or
module handout, or access to study materials.
• Content and activities: What kinds of activities are included and what content will the learners be
using?
• Reflection and demonstration: Are the learners actively encourage to reflect at key points? How are
they demonstrating their learning? What forms of diagnostic, formative and summative assessment are
included?
• Communication and collaboration: How are the learners interacting with each other and their tutors?
Are there any elements of collaboration included?
Figure 2 illustrates the ‘Principles’ element of the Course Features, whilst Figure 3 shows the terms associated
with ‘Guidance and Support’ element. The value in the Course Features conceptual view in particular stems
from enabling practitioners to think beyond content to a broader vision for the course; and in particular the key
principles and pedagogical approaches. It also enables them to think of the context of the design and the nature
of the learners and their associated needs.
The second example is the Course Map, which is associated with the Combine C. Once the Course Features
exercise has been completed, teachers can fill in the Course Map, which provides more details on the six
elements of the course features view. This includes details of which tools and resources are associated with each
of the elements and any notes such as details of prerequisites required or description of the philosophy
underpinning the learning intervention, for example it might be that peer interaction is deemed important or that
learners are expected to generate their own materials.
The third example is the Pedagogy or Activity Profile (Figure 4), which is associated with the Combine C. This
enables teachers to map the types of activities the learners will engage with. There are six types: assimilative
activities (reading, viewing, listening), information handling, communicative, productive, experiential (such as
drill and practice exercises) and adaptive (such as modelling or simulation). The profile also indicates the
amount of time spent on assessment activities. The profile is available as an online flash widget. 4
A key conceptual view is the Storyboard, another example of the Combine C (Figure 5). This enables teachers
to see how the different elements of the design process fit together. It consists of a timeline, with the activities
included in the design along the middle. Learning outcomes are mapped to the assessment elements. Above the
activities any inputs to the individual activities are include: for example reading materials or podcasts. Below
the activities outputs are listed, for example contribution to a discussion forum or creation of a blog post. Topics
and timeframes are indicated along the top (in the example shown the Storyboard covers four weeks’ worth of
activities). Learning outcomes are listed along the left hand side. At the centre of the storyboard are the
4
http://www.rjid.com/open/pedagogy/html/pedagogy_profile_1_2.html
Evaluation
The framework has been trialled in a range of contexts over the last couple of years. The JISC-funded SPEED
project 5 enabled us to run a series of face-to-face workshops, along with a series of synchronous sessions to four
UK institutions. In addition, we have done numerous workshops at international conferences. The evaluation
consisted of observations of the workshops and gathering of data from participants around four main questions:
What three words best describe the workshop? What did you like? How could the workshop be improved? And
what action plans would participants do as a result of participation? Overall the evaluation was positive,
participants found the workshops engaging, useful and inspiring. However, most participants would have liked
more time to explore the resources. We have found that running these workshops works best over a two-day
period. They found that the learning design activities enabled them to think beyond content to learning activities
and the learner experience. They enjoyed the mix of micro-level designs to create learning activities and the
ability to think of the learning intervention at a holistic level.
The things they liked included: the wide coverage and the rich set of resources provided, the fact that the
workshop had a strong focus on pedagogy and being able to see the bigger picture in terms of course design.
The course features card set was particularly popular. Also a general comment was that they would value having
more time to explore the resources and that it would be valuable to use the course designs presented in the
design of real courses. In terms of action plans, participants stated that they wanted to explore the conceptual
views with their own courses and that they would like to share these with colleagues in their own institution.
Words to describe the workshop included: inspiring, informative, timely, reflective, participatory, collaborative,
based on theory but applying practice, innovative and creative. The framework and associated resources are
particularly useful when designing a Networked Learning intervention, in particular the resources associated
with the Communication and Collaboration Cs.
In addition, to the general evaluation of the workshops we have run, one of our researchers, Ming Nie, did a
more in-depth evaluation of the use of the 7Cs framework as part of the JISC-funded SPEED project. 6 The
following quotes, from her evaluation, demonstrate that the 7Cs framework enables teachers to think differently
about their design and to make more pedagogically informed choices:
5
http://speedprojectblog.wordpress.com/author/bdra/
6
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance/projects/speed
The visual nature of the tools and the quick and easy way that one could use it without too much
elaborative training. They help stimulate us to look at the course in a different way, in a natural and
creative way even if we didn’t see all the little links right upfront.
I wanted to have my thinking challenged with regard to course design and development and I definitely
left reflecting and questioning our unit's current approach and have some good tools and approaches to
pilot with course design teams.
It’s a way of freeing your mind and putting all the ideas of all the people in the course team down
somewhere, not having to be so prescriptive. It was just a much freer and [more] creative experience
than getting the learning outcomes and writing them as active verbs, and getting in at a granular level.
It was quite sort of a liberating thing to just have everybody move components around and say, ‘Do
you know I really like all these features. I’d like to do some problem-based learning. I’d like to do
peer-review.’
Conclusion
This paper has described a new learning design framework. It has provided a description of some of the
conceptual learning designs we have developed as part of this, along with a sample of evaluation data on its use
with practitioners. The evaluation indicates that the framework is welcomed and that the conceptual designs
enable teachers to rethink their design practice to create more engaging learning interventions for their learners.
The conceptual views can also be used with learners, to give them an indication of the nature of the courses they
are undertaking. We aim to continue to refine the elements of the framework. In particular more work is needed
around the ‘consider’ and ‘consolidate’ elements, including rubrics for assessment and evaluation of the
effectiveness of the design.
Acknowledgements
7
http://larnacadeclaration.org
8
http://www.metis-project.org/
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