Main Arguments Learning objects (LOs) and learning design (LD)

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Main ArgumentsLearning objects (LOs) and
learning design (LD)

• Vehicles for discovering, sharing and developing
  pedagogic strategies and designs.
• Introduction reveals and highlights underlying
  obstacles to their adoption - including existing
  pedagogic practice and values.
• Makes staff development almost inevitable?
• But what about organisational development?

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A Cry from The Heart

• Why is it so difficult to share learning
  materials? (UNFOLD Glasgow meeting)
• The learning object dream has failed - long live
  Learning Design? (CETIS Pedagogy Forum)
• Are we missing something?

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Systemic Issues

• education is a social and political system, and
  the checks and balances that keep the system
  working may not be shifted by any technology
• Mayes (Groundhog Day)

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Understanding Your SystemFunctional or
Dysfunctional?
Senior Management
Operational Management
Operations
From Littlejohn Carey, 2005 in Prep after
Collis and Moonen 2005
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Reality Therapy.

• Where teachers are in reality - embedded (Koper),
  contextualised, individual, (sometimes isolated
  competitive) non-transferable.
• Many teachers do not possess a vocabulary for
  articulating and sharing their pedagogic
  strategies and designs with others, particularly
  beyond their cognate discipline areas X4L
  seminar on LD

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Mediating LD
Abstract
Contextualised
Embedded Practice
Intermediate Descriptions
Learning Design
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An LD Continuum

• Formal Semi-StructuredPrimitives/Artefact
  s

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Our Experience

• better to work outwards from teachers existing
  conceptions and terminologies towards new
  concepts and terms, rather than to expect them to
  adopt new frameworks
• Back to
• Prepare
• Teach
• Review

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Some Systemic Issues

• Lack of an ID Tradition? (hostility?)
• Shuell would be a useful bridge to ID
• Strongly implicit organisational model in LD
  LOs
• Industrial approach is implicit in LO LD
• Division of Labour
• Design Intensive
• Design once run many
• Change of roles

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Fundamental Systemic Issues

• Learning Technology especially LD and LO has an
  implicit organisational model at odds with the
  status quo (Pollock, N. Cornford, J. 2000,
  http//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/virtual-universit
  ies/)
• This is the real barrier to sharing learning
  materials (c.f. Twigg, C, at Alt-C 2005
  http//www.alt.ac.uk/altc2005/ altc2005_documents/
  caroltwigg_qa.pdf When Worlds Collide - JISC
  2004)
• This dialectic is the driver - how quick do we
  want to go?

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What Would a New System Look Like?

• Teaching as the primary business (the baleful and
  distorting effect of the RAE is dumped)
• Courses are designed, developed and delivered by
  multidisciplinary teams
• Course content/syllabus is not changed (apart
  from maintenance) for between 3-7 years
• All course materials are created and shared
  before the course begins i.e. no teaching from
  your own notes
• The staff who teach and tutor on a course are
  probably not the staff who designed and developed
  the course
• Staff teaching and tutoring on a course are
  likely to be on different employment contracts to
  traditional lecturers who are primarily subject
  specialists

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What a Learning Design Technologist Sees
The Learning Design Continuum A
B
C LD Levels A - Basics and
Sequence B- Properties and Conditions C -
Notifications
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What a Teacher Sees
Many Continuums
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Implications for the Future

• LD and LOs as Boundary Objects (Wenger) for CoPs.
• They Need to Carry some Context and offer
  possible Generalisations (Toshiba)
• Lessons from AI Knowledge Elicitation for LD?

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Getting from Here to ThereThe Bigger Picture
Where Teachers Are Operating at Levels 1, 2 3
of Ramsdens Model of HE teaching
Craft Style Communication with Artefacts and
Primitives
Organisational Tools?
Semi - Structured Narrative
LD Tools
Structured Narrative
A(1) B (2) C(2.5)
3
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Conclusions

• We may indeed find that learning objects and
  learning design do help in transforming teaching
  in higher education it just might not happen
  the way we though it would
• End