LearningdesignMay08

About the Meeting
This meeting took place on Tuesday 20 May 2008 at the Midland Hotel, Manchester. The event focused on updates in the area of learning design, bringing together the work of the recent JISC Design for Learning programme and other initiatives working in the area of Learning Design (including IMS Learning Design) plus highlighting potential future directions. CETIS has been involved in the area of learning design for many years, playing an integral part in the development of the IMS Learning Design specification, and has held a number of events and updates in this area. You can read more background about the event below.

As usual the meeting was free to attend and lunch and refreshments were provided.

Location
The meeting took place in the Stanley Suite in the Midland Hotel in Manchester. Maps and directions are available by following this link

Participants
You can see who attended the event from the delegate list.

Feedback
If you attended this event, please fill in the survey at http://www.polldaddy.com/s/99D9FE5BF6ECEB1E/

You can see write ups/blogs at [elearning focus] and [Lisa's blog]

If you have written about this event, please let us know and we can link to it mailto:l.corley@bolton.ac.uk

Agenda
The meeting ran from 10.00am until 4.15pm. You can download an [Agenda] (word doc)

Slides
Presentations at this event included: Professor Oleg Liber, CETIS/ University of Bolton: Origins of IMS Learning Design & the conceptual framework [Slides]

Helen Beetham, JISC Consultant: Overview of the JISC Design for Learning programme, developments & future directions [Slides]

Professor Martin Weller, Open University: Role of LD in ‘bridging the gap’; overview of Compendium work at OU plus thoughts on a ‘flickr for learning designs’ [Slides]

Mark Barrett-Baxendale, Liverpool Hope University: Using LD with practitioners [Slides]

Dai Griffiths, University of Bolton: TenCompetence– background & overview. [Slides] Phil Beauvoir, University of Bolton: Demonstration of latest developments: Recourse [Slides] Paul Sharples, University of Bolton: Demonstration of latest developments: widget server [Slides]



Participants also had the chance to see information about the Graphical Learning Modeller (GLM), an IMS Learning Design modelling environment being developed as part of the EU-project PROLIX. The purpose of the GLM is to assist novices of IMS LD in freely modelling units of learning without having studied IMS LD concepts, currently providing assistance for level A and some level B functionalities. More infomation is in the [Prolix Brochure.pdf] and also the [GLM software flyer.pdf]

Background
By Dai Griffiths

The development of Virtual Learning Environments made life very much easier for the teacher, back in the days when providing a Wiki, a forum and a chat for learners was a challenging task. In the early years of the present decade, however, many of those working with technology in education were dissatisfied with the functionality which they offered. This gave rise to a number of initiatives which are broadly described as learning design, with a focus on defining activities for learners which went beyond “read and test”. These included the development of innovative applications and the inclusion of new features in VLEs, and also the definition of educational modelling languages, which could be used to describe learning activities.

One of the criticisms of VLEs, however, was that while Learning Objects could be exchanged between systems, the courses themselves could not be exported or imported. The move to a learning design approach made this problem more severe, and in order to resolve this in 2003 the IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) specification was published, building on the Educational Modelling Language developed by the Open University of the Netherlands. This provided both a model for defining learning activities, and also a file format in which they could be expressed. Since then a great deal of work has been done with the specification, and in the wider area of learning design, much of it funded by JISC or by the European Commission. Some developments have used IMS LD as a modelling language (such as Reload and SLeD) while others have produced applications which are informed by the learning design approach, and in many cases have provided full or partial interoperability by means of IMS LD (for example LAMS).

On the one hand, in the five years which have passed since IMS LD was published much has changed in the technological environment. The role of the VLE is no longer entirely secure. Teachers and learners may not be impressed by VLEs in a world where many learners are intensive users of social software, and where much of the functionality of a VLEs is available for free from Google. At the same time many now see VLE’s as being monolithic, when compared with the potential for combining services such as Wikipedia and YouTube using widgets and gadgets. This has led to the development of many valuable applications, and innovative learning activities, but many of these have no common underlying conceptual model. This makes it very hard to compare like with like, and to build on experience. It has also led to an impression has that IMS LD may no longer be relevant, making exchange and comparison of learning activities hard or impossible. On the other hand, work has been continuing on the implementation of IMS LD systems, much of it being carried out in European Projects. The increased usability of emerging editors and the ability of runtime environments to provide flexible services suggest that the specification is better able to deal with the challenges of emerging environments than has been assumed by many.

In organising this meeting we believe that this is a good time to reflect on the past five years of work, and indeed that it may be watershed for the future of learning design. The presentations and discussions will provide an update on current developments in learning design applications, and provide an opportunity to reflect on the shared conceptual models which underly them, and on the future relevance of IMS LD.

Useful Links
Midland Hotel, Manchester.

JISC Design for Learning Programme

TenCompetence European Project

IMS Learning Design specification