LearningdesignMay08background

This information is provided as a background to the CETIS Learning Design event on 20th May 2008. Details and registration for the event are at http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/LearningdesignMay08

Background
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.