Learning Design

In his latest work Christopher Alexander describes 15 fundamental properties that make structures more alive and whole. These properties are already described for being applicable in many different domains including education. However, many of these applications seem to be highly speculative and therefore not reliable.

Topics

The workshop addresses three main topics.

Topic 1: The meaning of Christopher Alexander's 15 properties for education.

This topic aims at examining the meaning of the 15 properties described by Alexander in The Nature of Order for educational purposes with the focus on one property or a small subset of them. It is hereby important to make this applicability more specific and well-grounded in order to show that indeed the properties are – or are not – applicable. Possible questions to be addressed are:

• Can specific properties be used for designing educational actions and how can this applicability be supported?
• What do the properties mean in the field of education?
• Can we find examples of the properties in successful educational scenarios?
• Does this application still match with the original ideas of Alexander?

Topic 2: The specific volatile structures of educational situations.

A characteristic of patterns in the domain of education is their volatility, because the structures of a pattern instance which evolve based on social interactions are flexible and short-living. It is therefore difficult to document or measure them in a consistent way. Furthermore, the context of educational situations, ranging from short interactions to curriculum design, is always different, which makes the application of patterns less predictable. Possible questions to be addressed are:

• How can educational patterns be documented in a way which takes their volatility into account?
• What consequences does the volatility has for the conscious application of educational patterns?
• Can we generalize these volatile structures in the pattern format at all?

Topic 3: The empirical ground for educational patterns.

Educational situations are generally hard to generalize. Much empirical research in education are case studies which contain (too) many details and are therefore hard to generalize with respect to different educational situations. Other studies mainly contain general pedagogical principles and offer not much help in concrete situations. Patterns can connect these two views, but there still are open questions such as:

• How can educational patterns be empirically justified?
• Which pattern mining methods are appropriate for research in this field?
• As educational situations are highly dependent on their context, how can they be reliably generalized?

Interactive learning environments invite a broad spectrum of participation. On one end of are interactive models of complex phenomena. For example in science learning, simulations of natural and artificial (mechanical, electrical, etc.) phenomena can be an effective way to represent complex relationships underlying a scientific law. On the other end, social learning environments stimulate discussion of ideas and clarification of issues by a process of collaborative inquiry, often guided by more knowledgeable people (e.g. teachers, mentors, and parents). Whereas individual learning refers to the difference between what a learner can perform independently compared to what he or she previously could perform only by guidance (“knowledge in the head”), social learning refers to what a group of learners can produce together as well as the process leading up to it (“knowledge in the world”).

Social media have enabled interactive learning environments to more fully reach the “social end” of the spectrum, whereas advances in user interface and interaction techniques for ubiquitous computing and mobile devices have improved access to and manipulation of models of scientific phenomena. It is when users become content producers and not merely consumers of information and the power and control are shifted from designated experts to a broader network of competent practitioners that the learning potential of social media will be fully realized. Thus, we feel that by combining interactive models with social sharing (or applying wiki principles to interactive learning environments) may prove invaluable in designing collaborative learning systems. In other words we aim for multiple perspectives on collaborative learning as a design activity.

It covers the content, segmenting, sequencing and navigation, adaptation to target audience, design of text and graphics, learning tasks and feedback, and motivation. In the context of a project on designing elearning modules on renewable energies, this checklist was successfully used for providing formative feedback to the developers.

The session, which had more than 80 participants, was promoted through LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. Addressing the new European initiative to overcome the implementation gap of technology in education, the workshop presented material from the new special issue of eLearning Papers, focussing on best practice experiences and concrete examples that demonstrate how good learning design can make a difference.

The event also launched the first tablet version of eLearning Papers. This interactive PDF format, suitable for all tablets, marks a new and exciting direction for the journal. Workshop attendees interacted with the tablet and were able to experiment with its functionality.

Drawing on the material from eLearning papers, the workshop focused on the following issues:

• What are the implications of new social and participatory media for education and how can they be harnessed more effectively to support learning?
• What are the different ways in which learning interventions can be represented?
• How can social networking and other dialogic tools be used to enable teachers to share and discuss their learning and teaching practices, ideas and designs?
• What are the implications for learners, teachers and institutions of new social and participatory media?
• What new pedagogies are emerging as a result of the use of new social and participatory media?
• How are Open Educational Resources being design, used and repurposed?

The workshop opened with an introduction by Tapio Koskinen that discussed the history and current role of eLearning Papers. Tapio is Executive Committee Member of European Distance and e-Learning Network – EDEN, Board member of the Finnish eLearning Centre and Director of the Editorial Board of eLearning Papers. He is currently Head of New Solutions at Aalto Professional Development, extension of Aalto University. Since 1995 he has been participating in the work of several European R&D and training projects. His works include NoE Prolearn roadmapping (FP6) and Time2Learn roadmapping (FP5). In 2011 he was invited as a rapporteur for the Digital Agenda Assembly workshop: “Mainstreaming e-Learning in education and training”.

Next, Lieve Van den Brande, presented the talk: “Creative learning environments: a new European initiative to overcome the implementation gap”. Lieve is a Principal Administrator at the DG Education and Culture of the European Commission. She is responsible for "ICT for learning" both in terms of policies as parts of the Lifelong learning programme. She holds a Ph.D. in educational sciences from the University of Liège and has several degrees in education, psychology and teacher training. Lieve has been working for more than 20 years at the EC: DG Information Society around 'Telematics for Education and Training'; DG Research around social sciences research and now since 4 years at DG EAC on e-Learning and digital competences. Lieve is also a member of the Editorial Board of eLearning Papers.

Afterwards, Gráinne Conole offered a comprehensive presentation of the state of the art on designing for learning. Gráinne is Professor at University of Leicester since September 2011. Previously she was Professor of e-learning in the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. Gráinne has research interests in the use, integration and evaluation of Information and Communication Technologies and e-learning and impact on organisational change. Her latest book about Learning Design will be out any time soon. She guest edited the eLearning Papers special issue on Learning Design that will be published in this workshop.

The workshop ended by opening the floor to the audience members for discussion. The eLearning Papers board members were pleased to have the chance to interact with readers and contributers of the journal, and to receive their enthusiastic responses to the tablet format. The board looks forward sharing the journals' new issues and further developments with them, as they arise.