I have just returned from a month down under where I did 20 presentations and workshops. The workshops were around our 7Cs of learning design framework and as always discussions with the participants helped take my thinking forward. In particular, I feel I have improved the course features activity. This consists of a set of cards around four facets of a course design, namely: guidance and support, content and activities, reflection and demonstration, and communication and collaboration. The idea is to identify which of the cards across these four facets are important for a given course. However, I realised that there are two additional aspects, namely: the course principles and the pedagogical approaches. The slideshare below gives more details on this. I would welcome thoughts on this!   Course features from Grainne Conole

I am writing a chapter for a book, which will be an edited collection of chapters from current National Teaching Fellows. This blog post provides a summary of my current thinking.  New technologies, offer a plethora of ways in which learners can curate and manage content, and communicate and collaborate with peers. Social and participatory media enable learners to be part of a rich ecology of peer learners, potentially distributed worldwide. Mobile learning is now a reality through smart phones and tablets, meaning that learners can truly learn anywhere and anytime. Virtual worlds and serious games provide rich authentic environments that can foster approaches to learning such as role-play and problem-based learning. Despite this, there is a gap between the potential and the reality. Teachers and learners lack the necessary digital literacy skills (Jenkins 2009) to be able to harness the affordances (Conole and Dyke 2004) of new technologies.  The chapter will describe a new learning design methodology, which has been created to help teachers make more informed design decisions that are pedagogically grounded and make effective use of technologies to foster different pedagogical approaches. This includes: a range of learning design representations, which both guide the design process and make the design explicit and hence sharable with others, harnessing social media to promote discussion and engagement with peers and in particular use of a specialised social networking site for sharing and discussing designs, and a range of workshops created and evaluated as part of our 7Cs of learning design framework (Armellini 2012; Conole 2012). Introduction Designing for learning is arguably the key challenge facing education today (Conole 2013). Education operates in a complex external environment, with increasing financial constraints and challenges to traditional institutions as a result of the emergence of free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Furthermore, with increasing tuition fees, learners are thinking more critically about which institution to go to and expect a high quality learning experience. Despite the potential technologies offer to support learning, they are not being used extensively, teachers lack the necessary digital literacy skills (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins 2009). This chapter will introduce a new learning design methodology that has been developed to help teachers create pedagogically effective learning interventions that make innovative use of technologies. The work has been developed as part of the OU Learning Design Initiative<!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[2]<!-[endif]-> and work carried out at the University of Leicester on the Carpe Diem model.<!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[3]<!-[endif]-> These have now being combined to form the 7Cs of learning design framework, which is described in the next section. The 7Cs of learning design framework The 7Cs of learning design framework illustrates the key stages involved in the design process, from initial conceptualisation of a learning intervention through to trialing and evaluating it in a real learning context (Figure 1). The framework consists of the following stages: 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? Capture: What Open Educational Resources are being used and what other resources need to be developed? Create: What is the nature of the learning intervention the learners will engage with? What kinds of learning activities will the learners engage with? Communicate: What types of communication will the learners be using? Collaboration: What types of collaboration will be learners be doing? 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? Consolidate: How effective is the design? Do the different elements of the design work together? Figure 1: The 7Cs of learning design framework For each of the seven stages we have developed a series of conceptual designs, building on our own work and the work of others in the field. Three of these are described here. The first is the course principles view, which is associated with the conceptualise element. This enables teachers to think about the overall essence of the learning intervention and how it will be delivered and supported. Participants interact with a pack of cards around the following elements: <!-[if !supportLists]->1.     <!-[endif]->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. <!-[if !supportLists]->2.     <!-[endif]->Pedagogical approaches: What pedagogies are involved? For example is the intervention based on constructivist principles, is it problem or inquiry-based? <!-[if !supportLists]->3.     <!-[endif]->Guidance and support: What guidance and support are provided? For example in terms of a website or module handout, or access to study materials. <!-[if !supportLists]->4.     <!-[endif]->Content and activities: What kinds of activities are included and what content will the learners be using? <!-[if !supportLists]->5.     <!-[endif]->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? <!-[if !supportLists]->6.     <!-[endif]->Communication and collaboration: How are the learners interacting with each other and their tutors? Are there any elements of collaboration included? The previous post provides a visualision the course features view.   Once the course features exercise has been completed, teachers can fill in the course views 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. 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 modeling or simulation). The profile also indicates the amount of time spent on assessment activities.  The profile is available as an online flash widget.<!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[4] A key conceptual view is the storyboard. 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. Evaluation The framework has been trialed in a range of contexts over the last year. The JISC-funded SPEED project<!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[5]<!-[endif]-> has 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 a series of workshops at a number of international conferences. The evaluation consisted of observations of the workshops and gathering of data from participants around four main questions: which 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 workshop engaging, useful and even inspiring. 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.  To give an indication of the evaluation comments, data from a workshop run with 25 participants at the ASCILITE 2012 conference are provided. Figure 2 shows a word cloud of the three words participants used to describe the workshop.   Figure 2: Three words to describe the workshop 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. Interestingly, this group wanted more on the theoretical underpinnings to the ideas presented. 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. Ming Nie has undertaken an extensive evaluation of the use of the 7Cs framework with our SPEED partners. The following quotes, from her evaluation, demonstrate that the 7Cs enables teachers to think differently about their design and to make more pedagogically informed choices: We made a big breakthrough. We have achieved the insight about the need to structure it as a course, an online course, and not just simply as a set of learning activities plus integrated resources. 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 chapter 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. The activity profile is particularly useful as it enables learners to see the mix of different types of learning activities they will engage with. 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. References Armellini, A. (2012). Carpe Diem: the 7Cs of design and delivery. Beyond Distance Research Alliance blog.Conole, G. (2012). The 7Cs of design and delivery. e4innovation.com.Conole, G. (2013). Designing for learning in an open world. New York, Springer.Conole, G. and M. Dyke (2004). "What are the affordances of information and communication technologies?" ALT-J 12(2): 113-124 %U http://oro.open.ac.uk/6981/.Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide, NYU Press.Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century, Mit Pr. <!-[if !supportFootnotes]-> <!-[endif]->   <!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[1]<!-[endif]-> http://cloudworks.ac.uk   <!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[2]<!-[endif]-> http://ouldi.open.ac.uk   <!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[3]<!-[endif]-> http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance/carpe-diem-folder   <!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[4]<!-[endif]-> http://www.rjid.com/open/pedagogy/html/pedagogy_profile_1_2.html   <!-[if !supportFootnotes]->[5]<!-[endif]-> http://speedprojectblog.wordpress.com/author/bdra/

I’m delighted that my new book proposal has been accepted by the publisher! The aim is to produce a more practically focussed book than my Designing for Learning in an Open World Springer book. The book would consist of a rich set of learning designs and practical examples of how these can be used. This would draw on the learning design work I have been involved with at Leicester and the OU, but also on the learning design work of others including work on pedagogical patterns. I have been struggling to come up with a structure for the book, but have recently had an epiphany moment! I think it would be good to structure the book around our 7Cs of learning design framework. Hence the book would consists of the following chapters: an introduction chapter to set the scene, a chapter on pedagogies, a chapter on each of the 7Cs, and a conclusion chapter. Also I think ‘7Cs of learning design’ would work nicely as a title! Thoughts welcome!

The ASCILTIE 2012 conference in Wellington was excellent! Here are some of the highlights. Well done to the conference chair Mark Brown from Massey University and his team! Neil Selwyn kicked off the conference with a thought-provoking keynote. He argued in particular that we need to take a more critical stance in terms of the use of technology in education. He suggested that we see educational technology as a ‘positive project’, the allure of the new, the allure of speed and the promise of substantial change. He quoted Steve Woolgar (2002) who critiques the notion that something new and different is happening and also Terry Mayes’ metaphor of the Groundhog day - in the film the main actor wakes up everyday to the same day, which is repeated over and over again. Terry argues that we are seeing the same with new technologies, each one being heralded as being transformative but in time nothing much changes. Larry Cubans much cited Teachers and Machines - the classroom use of technologies since the 1920s is depressingly still relevant today; i.e. technologies have not had the predicted impact on learning and teaching. Dale Stephens provided a different take on things on day two of the conference. Dale argued that the university is dead, new technologies offer alternative ways for learners to connect and learn. He has set up an organisation called UnCollege. The website states that UnCollege is a social movement designed to help you hack your education. This manifesto will show you how to gain the passion, hustle, and contrarianism requisite for success — all without setting foot inside a classroom. One of the highlights for me was the ‘Great MOOC debate’. I led the for team along with Norm Vaughan and Keith Smyth. The against team consisted of Bill Anderson, Maggie Harnett and Mark Nicols. Sadly we lost but I have to give it to Bill’s team they were very eloquent and entertaining. Some of the arguments we put forward were that: MOOCs are free and hence provide a mechanism for those who can’t afford education a means to learn and improve their employability options, they provide a marketing shop window for institutions, they enable learners to be part of a global, distributed, networked community of peers fostering connectivist approaches to learning, they can be personalised and adapted to individual needs, they focus on ‘hot’ topics and are delivered by experts in the field, they over widening access and a means of combating social inclusion, they provide a mechanism for harnessing the power of social and participatory media, they are free of time and space, and finally they can be linked to badges for recognition of competences and can be linked through to formal accreditation. There is a great video of the debate well worth watching. And finally, the conference dinner was amazing! Given that it was the day before the premier of the Hobbit, the theme was Hollywood or rather Wellywood - some great costumes, Sean the sheep was my favourite.  

A New Year so a new challenge! So I have decided to try the photo a day challenge. Rules are you must take one photo a day but you can post them in batches. I have joined a Flickr group set up by Ricardo Torres Kompen and we already have five people signed up. I think this could be great fun and will give me a chance to get to know the affordances of Flickr and in particular what it is like to be a member of a group on there. I suspect knowing me there will be lots of pictures of cats, food and exotic locations! Will be interesting to see what kinds of things I choose to photograph and what the other members of the group post. 

I am currently at an excellent kick off meeting for our new EU-funded METIS Learning Design project. You know what it’s like with European projects… Sometimes you go to the kick off meeting and you get that feeling of dread… it’s like the tower of Babel, no one knows each other very well, everyone has a different view of what the project is about. It has the makings of a disastrous project, or at the very best will be darn hard work. Other kick off meetings you go to, you know everyone well and know their work and most importantly you have a shared sense of vision of what the project is about. That was my feeling at the meeting in Valladolid. We are aiming to create an Interactive Learning Design Environment (ILDE) building on our collective work to date. We have a good mix of both technical and pedagogical expertise to make this work. In the meeting we concentrated on use case scenarios and technical specifications, looking at the three sectors we are targeting: Higher Education, Adult Learning and the VET sector. We mapped out the needs of each and created personas for the kinds of people we envisaged using the tool. This has got to be my dream project - to create an all inclusive online learning design tool, ambitious I know and maybe not achievable  - this time at least. The nice thing is that the project is timely and builds on a number of recent research projects that I have been involved with. These include the OULDI of course at the OU, and more recently, with JISC funding, the opportunity to combine OULDI work with the Carpe Diem work at Leicester to create the 7Cs of Learning Design. We have been able to trial this at a number of conferences and events and also through the JISC-funded SPEED project with 4 UK institutions (Darby, Liverpool John Moores, London South Bank and Northampton Universities). I am particularly lucky to be working with Gabi Witthaus and Ming Nie at Leicester on this and of course more broadly with the LD community - both the METIS partners and internationally such as colleagues in Australia. Again the timing is great as we have just published the Larnaca Declaration on Learning Design as part of James Dalziel’s ALTC/OLT fellowship. This provides a solid theoretical underpinning to the state of the field.  The state of METIS also coincides with the launch of our Learning Design MOOC that started this week, and we will be exploring aspects of the work both from METIS and the Larnaca Declaration in that in the MOOC over the next couple of months! In this presentation I propose a conceptual framework to underpin the development of the ILDE based on our 7Cs of Learning Design framework. 7 cs of learning design from Grainne Conole In the table below I provide a mapping of the 7Cs of Learning Design framework to the three different types of Learning Design tools (conceptual - orange, technical - green and sharing/discussion - red).   7Cs element Learning Design tool Conceptualise Course features Design Narratives Personas Analysing context: factors and concerns Capture Resource audit Repository search strategy Create Course map Activity profile Task swimlane Storyboard Communicate E-moderating framework Mapping forums, blogs and wikis Communicative affordances Collaborate Collaborative affordances CSCL Pedagogical Patterns Consider Assessment Pedagogical Patterns Learning outcomes map  

I thought it would be interesting to think about what kinds of activities I typically do in a month. So here is a list of some of the activities for this month: Keynotes in Athens, Edge Hill and Southampton Attending a kick off meeting for a new EU project METIS Contributing to the LDS MOOC on Learning Design Writing an article on innovative teaching and learning methods Updating our 7Cs of Learning Design framework Examining a PhD thesis in Porto Writing bids for the forthcoming EU calls Working on content and activities for our new Masters in Learning Innovation PhD supervision meetings - both face-to-face and on Skype An online Webinar on quality and OER Attending an EDEN exec meeting in Brussels I wonder how that compares with other peoples’ typical month?

7 cs update from Grainne Conole I had a great brainstorming session on Friday with the team. Gabi Witthaus has already blogged about this. In this post I want to describe our current thinking on the 7Cs of Learning Design. We have now regrouped the 7Cs into four categories: Vision Conceptualise (i.e what are you designing and why, who are you designing for?) Activities  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) Synthesis  Combine (combining the activities to give a holistic overview of the design and associated learning pathways) Implementation  Consolidate (in terms of running the design in a real learning context, evaluating, refining and sharing the design). Each C has a set of Conceptual Learning Designs (CLDs) associated with it. For example the Course Features and the Persona CLDs are associated with Conceptualise. Course Features enables the designer to consider what the key principles of the course are, as well as the pedagogical approaches. Persona (developed by Yishay Mor from the Open University UK) enables the designer to consider the types of learners involved. CLDs associated with Capture include the Resource Audit which enables the designer to articulate what Open Educational Resources (OER) and multimedia will be included. The Learner Generated Content (LGC) CLD enables the designer to create an activity in which learners generate their own learning content. Communicate includes mechanisms for fostering communication, such as methods for effective e-moderating and looking at the affordances of different tools. Collaborate also includes looking at the affordances of different tools, but from the perspective of how they can be used to foster collaboration. There is also a CLD around the CSCL Pedagogical Patterns for collaborative learning, including the JIGSAW and PYRAMID Pedagogical Patterns. Consider includes a CLD to ensure that Learning Outcomes are mapped to assessment activities and also a CLD around fostering reflection. There is also a CLD around a set of assessment Pedagogical Patterns. Combine focuses on combining the learning activities into the following:  Course View which provides a holistic overview of the nature of the course Activity profile showing the amount of time learners are spending on different types of activities Storyboard which is a temporal sequence of activities mapped to resources and tools Learning pathway which is a temporal sequence of the learning designs. Finally, Consolidate is about putting the design into practice. This includes implementation, which might be in a face-to-face context, in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or through a specialised Learning Design tool, such as LAMS, CADMOS or WebCollage. Once the design is implemented a CLD around evaluation metrics can be used to assess the effectiveness of the design. Then a CLD on refinement can be used to improve the design and finally there is a CLD to enable the refined design to be shared with peers. We feel this is a much clearer framework and we are looking forward to getting feedback on this in the coming months. I will be using this as a basis for Week 3 of the OLDS MOOC in a couple of weeks’ time. 

So I am getting ready for Week 3 of the OULDS MOOC, which I am leading on. The course has been designed to have a bit more structure than some MOOCS. It is based around the use of Google Apps. The main course has been created in Google Docs. There are discussion threads in Google Forum and a weekly synchronous session using Google Hangouts. Cloudworks is being used to enable participants to share their completed activities. It’s been a lot of work trying to get the structure right and in particular ensuring the structure is scalable in terms of the large number of participants. My focus in Week 3 is on a range of Conceptual Learning Designs - such as the Course Features, Course Map and Activity Profile. I have included a short introductory video and a Slidecaste on the 7Cs of Learning Design. There are also links to further resources and readings. Colleagues from the University of Wollongong (Lori Lockyer, Sue Bennett and Shirley Agostinho) have also included an activity based on their work. It will be interesting to see how the week goes and I hope to get feedback from participants on their experience of being involved. The site for the course is http://olds.ac.uk.  

I’ve been working on the content and activities for our Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) module for our new Masters in Learning Innovation. The module aims to give students a thorough overview of different technologies and how they can be used to foster different pedagogical approaches. The module is both theoretically informed and practically applied. There will be ample opportunities for students to explore different technologies and reflect on their implications for practice. It will also draw on key research in the field. It starts with an overview of TEL and in particular the history of e-learning and some of the key milestones.  Then there is a focus on policy and its relationship to practice. Following this the range of technologies available are described, along with how they can be used to support learning. One fun activity in this section is a variant on the Photo a day challenge, for two weeks students will be asked to take a picture every day and upload it to a shared Flickr space. The twist is that the picture has to be technology related in some way. E-Pedagogies are then considered; namely: associative, constructivist, situative and connectivist. The research on learner experience and in particular learners’ perceptions and use of technologies is then covered, drawing in particular on research from the UK under the JISC learner experience programme.  Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are then explored, drawing in particular on the EU-funded OPAL and POERUP projects that I was involved with. E-Assessment is then covered, looking at the range of ways in which technologies can support formative, diagnostic, and summative feedback. Mobile learning is considered next and in particular the use of smart phones and tablets, this will include examples of how these are being used at courses at Leicester. We have a history of research on Virtual Worlds and this and gamification will be the next focus. Digital literacies and scholarship are then looked at, drawing in particular on Jenkin’s work on digital literacies and Weller’s recent book ‘The digital scholar.’ Social inclusion and exclusion are next considered, drawing in particular on a recent special issue of Distance Education on this topic. Finally, the module concludes by looking at the international dimension of TEL and extrapolating scenarios for the future. I have really enjoyed putting the module together and to developing the Blackboard site. Really looking forward to the module starting in October!