I’ve just returned from a few days in Dublin, where I was doing some work at Dublin City University (DCU). On Monday, I met with the President of DCU Brian MacCraith. We had an excellent conversation covering a wide range of aspects of the use of technology to support learning. Brian outlined their plans to set up a new Centre for Digital Learning, which sounds really exciting. So it will be interesting to see how things move forward at DCU as a result. I ran a two-hour Masterclass in the afternoon on learning design. I was expecting about 30 people, whereas in reality there were more than 90! We managed to have a good session nonetheless, with a number of interactive activities, such as: brainstorming the characteristics and implications of new technologies, exploring people’s personal digital learning environments, their views on Facebook and other social media,  and the how to ruin a course activity. They also had a chance to explore some of our learning design conceptual tools - such as the pedagogy/activity profile. On Tuesday I gave a keynote entitled ‘Social and participatory media and new digital literacies’ as a prelude to DCU’s annual teaching and learning awards. I was impressed with the range of innovations created by those who were shortlisted and it was great to hear the testimonials from their students. Overall it was a good trip and it was great to get some insight into what DCU is doing and their vision for the future. An institution to watch I think.

I’ve just returned from a great trip to South Africa with five of my colleagues from Leicester (Ale Armellini, Ming Nie, Palitha Edirisingha, Terese Bird and Gabi Witthaus). Gabi is collating all twelve of our presentations on the BDRA blog, which will also have some audio and video recordings of the sessions. We were presenting to colleagues at UNISA (South Africa’s distance education institution, which has an impressive 350, 000 students!). We presented in parallel at two campuses - Pretoria and Florida. The sessions covered the following topics: Optimising the research possibilities in online teaching and learning (Ming Nie and Gabi Witthaus) 2.     Questions for future e-learning research: can we plug the gaps? (Ale Armellini) 3.     New Technologies and 21st century learners and their impact on teaching and learning at Unisa (Palitha Edirisingha) 4.     Ethical considerations in learning and teaching (Palitha Edirisingha) 5.     OER-based design for learning and its impact on research (Ming Nie and Gabi Witthaus) 6.     What works and what doesn’t work in research dissemination (Terese Bird) 7.     An overview of the TEL landscape (Gráinne Conole) 8.     Research methodology in TEL (Gráinne Conole) 9.     Harnessing social media (Gráinne Conole) 10. The implications of open practices for learning, teaching and research (Gráinne Conole) 11. Translating research into practice (Gráinne Conole)  Together the presentations gave a rich overview of the currant state of the art in TEL research. The audience were very participatory and asked lots of great questions. Our host Paul Prinsloo couldn’t have looked after us better, and although we didn’t have much leisure time, we managed to get a bit of experience of life in South Africa.  Paul’s blog is well worth a look at.  We are hoping to go back and follow up with some more in-depth interactive workshops, particularly focusing around learning design and Open Educational Resources (OER). An excellent, productive and enjoyable trip!

I am delighted to have been elected to the EDEN executive!  The website states: The European Distance and E-Learning Network exists to share knowledge and improve understanding amongst professionals in distance and e-learning and to promote policy and practice across the whole of Europe and beyond. I must admit I was a tad nervous standing up and saying why I wanted to be elected. There were four of us standing for three places. EDEN is a great professional body and well worth getting involved with for anyone with an interest in distance and online learning. The annual conference and research workshops are always an excellent opportunity to catch up with other researchers in the field and are usually in lovely locations around Europe! EDEN also has an online professional network and is linked to the EURODL research journal. I am looking forward to working with others on the committee over the next few years!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24289877@N02/3638995571/ In this blog post I want to describe seven principles of learning design. I would welcome comments. Are there any others I have missed for example? The first is that teachers are bewildered by the plethora of tools available and lack the skills necessary to make informed learning design decisions. Therefore a key facet of all the tools is that they attempt to provide practitioners with some form of guidance and support around their design practice. The aim is to help them shift from an implicit, belief-based approach to design to one that is more explicit and design-based (Conole 2009). Evidence of the evaluation of the use of these tools shows that they do help shift practitioners from a focus on content to activities and the learner experience. The second is that many of the tools use the power of visualisation as a means of representing the designs. These can then be shared and discussed with other. The third is that there is a tension between design representations that are rigorous, precise and perhaps machine runnable and those that are more creative, ‘fluffy’ and nearer to real practice. Derntl et al.  (Derntl, Parish et al. 2010) argue that designing for learning needs both ‘beauty’ and ‘precision’; and they show how different design languages can be used to present these. They state that: We are in no way suggesting that beauty and precision are in opposition to one another, nor even that they are mutually exclusive concerns. We make the distinction merely to further stress the competing demands on instructional designers for maintaining a grand view of the learning experience while also addressing the myriad details of an effective end product. The fourth is that there is an issue about what level of in-context support and guidance is provided to the designer and how such support can be created on the fly from up-to-date and authoritative sources. The CompendiumLD tool includes a walled garden Google search, which searches across a number of predefined well-known and validated sources against a set of keywords(Brasher, Conole et al. 2008). However, in the future much more sophisticated personalised help needs to be developed. The fifth is the fact that learning designs are both a produce and a process. In the first instance the designer engages with various learning design Mediating Artefacts to guide their design process, through a creative, iterative and messy process. Then their final design is a product, which represents a particular moment in time in the design process. The sixth is that, as Liz Masterman articulates, there are two dimensions of learning design: i) the creation of structured sequences of learning activities, and ii) a way to represent and share practice. Finally, it is clear that the inherent affordances of different learning design tools will have an impact on how the practitioner goes about the design process. For example, because the LAMS tool focuses on tools as conceptual elements, the design process is likely to be tools focused. In contrast, the social networking site Cloudworks focuses on sharing and discussion and so emphasises the practitioner, dialogic aspects of design. I believe we are at an interesting watershed in terms of learning design research. We have made significant steps forward in the field over the last ten years or so and now have a much richer understanding of design practices and mechanisms for promoting them. The tools developed along the way have enabled us to explore these in real-world contexts; some focus on visualisation, others on dialogue and sharing, and others on guidance/support. All three of these different types of scaffolds are important and support the practitioner in different ways.  What is needed next is to try and combine these elements, not necessarily into one monolithic tool, but through the creation of some form of dynamic learning design ecosystem. As a first step towards this, the key researchers in the field have being meeting as part of an EU-funded group, the LDGrid.[1] A key output of the group is to produce a concise, comprehensive and accessible set of resources for practitioners and learners to help them adopt more learning design based thinking and practices. The group has held a number of workshops and has an evolving set of learning design resources. References Brasher, A., G. Conole, et al. (2008). CompendiumLD - a tool for effective, efficient and creative learning design.             Conole, G. (2009). Capturing and representing practice. In A. Tait, M. Vidal, U. Bernath and A. Szucs (Eds.) Distance and E-learning in Transition: Learning Innovation, Technology and Social Challenges. London, John Wiley and Sons.             Derntl, M., P. Parish, et al. (2010). "Beauty and precision in instructional design." Journal on e-learning 9(2): 185-202.                   [1] http://www.ld-grid.org/

We are excited about launching our new MSc in Learning Innovation this Autumn. The course will be available on campus from October 2012 and can be taken full-time or on a module-by-module basis. An online version of the course will be available from October 2013. There are four 30-credit modules (Technology Enhanced Learning, Learning Design, Research Methodologies and Case Studies of Innovation) and a 60-credit Dissertation module.  The first two modules in particular might be of interested to anyone who wants to get an up to date overview of new technologies and how they can be used to promote different pedagogical approaches. The MSc will give participants the chance to explore a range of technologies and consider their implications for practice. We also plan to link into a range of related activities throughout the broader e-learning community of researchers and practitioners, through social networking media and through participation in relevant online events - such as the popular Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and through our annual online conference ‘Follow the Sun’. More information on the MSc can be found on the website, also look at the four short videos we have produced, which give an overview of the course, it’s focus on learning and teaching innovation and a description of who might be interested in taking the course.

On Friday I did an unkeynote with Ricardo Torres Kompen at the PLE conference in Aveiro.  I must admit I was a little nervous as I have not done one before. I prepared a presentation but when I met with Ricardo I realised that the format was wrong, it was too much like a traditional one-way talk. We had asked people in advance on their thoughts on the following four questions: What is your personal digital learning environment and how do you use it? What are the main obstacles for building and maintaining a Personal Digital Learning Environment? How has your use of technologies changed in the last five years? What are your views on the PLE vs VLE debate? Is the VLE really dead? We sent the call for responses out on twitter and fb and set up a cloud. We also directly asked for short videos from a number of people. The response was amazing! We got some fantastic videos and some great reflective answers in Cloudworks. So then we had the task of deciding which bits to include. Ricardo edited the videos to find short snippets to address each of the question and I chose relevant quotes from Cloudworks. The format of the unkeynote was that we began by introducing the session and explaining what we had done in advance and the format for the talk. We then introduced two concepts. The first concept is around the relationship between VLEs/PLEs and formal/informal learning. The diagram shows how different learning scenarios can be mapped against two dimensions (formal vs. informal learning and VLEs vs. PLEs). So a traditional accredited course delivered through a VLE sits on the botton right, learners can augment that with study guides and materials provided by the institution in the VLE (bottom left). Many teachers also incorporate other tools, outwith the VLE (top right). Finally, something like a MOOC is located on the top left of the diagram. The second concept is that it is not just about the tools per se, but the learner interacting with the tools, through a particular pedagogical approach in a specific context. We then showed a short video from Stephen Downes, where he described the difference between a VLE and a PLE. We then summarised the responses to the four questions in turn, showing some of the quotes in the background a couple of video clips. We got the audience to add their thoughts on each of the questions and concluded with a set of ten emergent themes: The importance of curation and filtration. The need for new digital literacy skills and the importance of understanding the online culture. It takes time to appropriate these tools into your practice, need for learning by doing. The need to keep up. The importance of participation, social networks are two-way media The need for structured, guided learning pathways; open/distributed learning environments not for everyone. The rich range of tools for finding and managing information, and communicating and collaborating - each person adapts and personalises. The balance between lose institutionally controlled systems vs. portable, learner-controlled tools. It is about an ecosystem or ecology of people, resource and tools online. There is a blurring of the boundaries between the VLE and the PLE. We have got such a rich set of data and responses. We plan to summarise these, will blog these in due course.

I am absolutely thrilled that my HEA National Teaching Fellowship application has been successful; the University of Leicester issued a press release about it yesterday. As I blogged about before it was very hard writing the application, but it was good to sit back and reflect on what I have done and what my core principles and beliefs are. I am very grateful to our Pro VC, Christine Fyfe, for encouraging me to apply and also to Rose Griffiths in Education who reviewed my draft application and gave excellent suggestions on how it could be improved - I am sure that I would not have been successful without her help. In particular, she suggested that I structure the application around phases of technology development: the use of multimedia, the emergence of the Internet, new approaches to promoting the use of technology, and Open Educational Resources (OER), social and participatory media. The application needed to evidence my impact on: students, peers and the international community, as well as a personal reflection on my own professional development. I am in good company, delighted that my colleague at Leicester Jon Scott was also successful and also friends Helen Keegan and Rhona Sharpe. I am very much looking forward to the awards ceremony which takes place on 10th October in London and hope that I can live up to the fellowship in the work that I do in the coming years.

At the heart of my teaching practice is the desire to foster an engaging learning experience through effective and innovative use of pedagogies and technologies. My e-learning research constantly informs my teaching and I am an avid promoter of supporting others in improving their teaching practice. I have developed a suite of resources to help teachers make more effective and informed design decisions. I want to help them critically reflect on the use of technologies and whether they are appropriate to support different pedagogical approaches. These have been deployed and evaluated worldwide. Participants have said that my approach is inspiring and innovative, giving them lots of ideas on how to create more engaging learning interventions. I try to practice what I preach by adopting open practices - sharing my experiences and research findings widely, through activities in the university, nationally and internationally at conferences and other institutions, and through active use of social media. I have always been at the forefront of innovative use of technologies, seeing and harnessing the potential of each new phase of technology as it emerges. I will evidence this by structuring my claim around four major areas of technological development: the use of multimedia, the emergence of the Internet, new approaches to promoting the use of technology, and Open Educational Resources (OER), social and participatory media. I will demonstrate how I foster and promote excellence in teaching through my research: to enhance the learning experience, to cascade innovation and enable practitioners to created pedagogically informed learning activities that make effective use of technologies, and to improve my own professional practice and the development of my research. Individual excellence: enhancing and transforming the student experience From the beginning of my career, enhancing the student experience has been at the heart of my practice. Technologies offer an exciting range of ways to promote different pedagogical approaches and to enhance the learner experience. I have extensive experience of IT, both through teaching and research, which I believe is important in terms of understanding both the pedagogical and technical aspects of e-learning. My teaching experience includes Computing, Chemistry, Education, Library and Information Management, Mathematics, Physics and the use and application of Learning Technologies. I have a commitment to the use of technology based on personal use and experience, underpinned by active participation in relevant research. In addition, I have produced positional papers on the use and integration of technology. These have included responses to the DfES and HEFCE e-learning strategies, reviews of the Dearing enquiry and the National Grid for Learning. I have produced many staff development materials, as well as online courses, staff development workshops and seminars. I have been involved in the design and delivery of four masters in e-learning, PhD supervision and external examining. My role as a critical friend has been valued in this respect as this comment from Chris Jones (Reader, Open University) evidences: Gráinne is an extremely well connected and knowledgeable colleague in the field of e-learning who has an immense amount of energy and is generous with her ideas and assistance. I have worked with Gráinne previously when she proved to be a very supportive external examiner and research colleague. Her expertise in e-learning is well known and her international links invaluable. August 13, 2007 A key aspect of these masters courses has been to foreground innovation and demonstrate the power of harnessing new technologies through the students using them and applying them to their own practice. These programmes provide an important mechanism for supporting professional development and many of the students are professionals in FE/HE. The uniqueness of these masters is that they are underpinned by the latest e-learning research and the adoption of open practices to address the key challenges of 21st Century learning, harnessing the potential of new technologies. Completion of the programmes equips students with mechanisms to enable changes in their own practices and those of their colleagues. They enable them to explore how they can act as change agents, as well as supporting radical innovation in the design and the delivery of programmes. Hence this is a valuable mechanism for cascading innovation to others and enhancing the student experience. @gconole your insightful papers studied on MAODE, prompting debate and reshaping of mine and fellow students’ frame of reference. Alice Shepherd, via Twitter, March 9 2012 Phase One: Multimedia The start of my interest in using technologies to support learning was through the development of a series of interactive tutorials (developed using Authorware Professional). I integrated these into the curriculum, along with materials produced by the then Chemistry subject centre. Many of the teaching innovations and techniques I have developed have subsequently been adopted as standard teaching methods. During the Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE) initiative, I developed an e-portfolio, which was converted to a web-based university-wide system. It enabled learners to reflect on their learning and to evidence the development of their competences. Phase two - The emergence of the Internet When the web emerged, I created one of the first HE Chemistry websites in the UK, which was used for course announcements, distribution of course materials and links to the interactive tutorials. Evaluation of these materials with students was positive, showing the way they enhanced learning. These, in 1994, were some of the first examples of web pages developed for the university sector in the UK. Other early examples of my web innovations included developing a virtual school, online subject resources and a web-based module evaluation questionnaire. This work resulted in the pages receiving a top rating from Chemdex (a major online Chemistry resource body). I have an extensive knowledge of the Internet and, most importantly, a solid pedagogical understanding of the ways in which it can be used to support teaching and learning. I was also one of the early pioneers in online teaching using integrated VLEs. I was instrumental in UNL acquiring WebCT as a VLE and produced the first online module in the University. At Bristol I was engaged in equivalent developments, looking beyond VLEs to the development of a comprehensive Managed Learning Environment. In subsequent posts I continued to use technologies to support my teaching, as well as external staff development and research activities, such as contributing to online conferences, seminars, chat, and use of video, telephone and audio conferencing. Phase three - New approaches to promoting the use of technologies Throughout my career I have been interested in the development and evaluation of new approaches to promoting the use of technologies. I have actively applied this within my own teaching practices, ensuring that students gained rich insights into the potential and challenges around the use of technologies. I have always ensured that my research work is integrated into my teaching practice, so that students are provided with state of the art research in e-learning. Phase four - OER, social and participatory media I use technologies extensively in my teaching. As part of the masters at the OU, I promoted the use of social and participatory media. I am currently involved in the Massive Online Open Course (MOOC). This is an innovative course, which is offered free and is taken by thousands of people worldwide, delivered by international experts in the field, through innovative use of technologies, including social media. Summary Over the years, I have been involved with a number of innovations to enhance the learning experience and to gain insights into practitioners’ practice. One particular area where these issues have already had a significant impact is the emergence of technologies to support all aspects of learning. The perceived benefits include the opportunity to learn anytime and anywhere and to communicate and collaborate virtually across national boundaries, thereby reaching new student markets, offering flexible learning environments and facilitating student tracking. Inevitably, a lot of time and effort is needed to create and run online courses. My work has focussed on researching the affordances of technologies and then translating these into practical guidelines to help teachers use them in their teaching. Raising the profile of excellence I will now demonstrate how my focus has been on creating practical tools and resources to help teachers create more effective learning experiences, which make innovative use of technologies. Internationally, e-learning is an increasingly important area, as evidenced by the number of bidding opportunities which now include a technological component, the growth of e-learning organisations and the emergence of global alliances with a specific remit for exploring and exploiting the potential of technologies in education. My work as, outlined below, has therefore necessitated building up a range of national and international links. I feel that this outwardly focused aspect is vital for the future integration, growth and success of learning innovation. Such a long personal collaboration with Prof. Conole enables me to assure that she is an outstanding researcher, with a high international reputation and impact. I should stress her capacity to get involved in new ideas and projects, providing a thorough insight on each research issue. Also, she has a special ability in understanding the new affordances of technology and integrating them easily in innovative pedagogical projects. I can confirm her ability for effective communication of the research ideas and the reputation and impact of her blog. Finally, I can assure, as reviewer, that her book on Learning Design (in press by Springer Verlag) has significant chances to become a reference book in the field. Professor Yannis Demitriadis, Vallodalid University, February 10 2012 I see technologies as a catalyst for enabling colleagues to rethink their teaching practice and improve the learner experience. I have always been an early adopter, first exploring how technologies can be used in my own practice and then promoting and cascading good practice to colleagues. Grainne’s work on learning design has been a very important input into staff development and pedagogic thinking in the Open University Business School as we grapple with the challenge of generating engaging and productive approaches to technology supported learning. Prof. Mark Fenton-O’Creevy, National Teaching Fellow and Senior Fellow of the HEA, March 9 2012 I am considered a leader in the field and have an extensive network of international collaborators. For example, I am currently on the advisory panel for an Australian fellowship focusing on learning design. I am also a core member of the EU-funded STELLAR Learning Design Grid. I am on the Executive Board of ICEM. I also have strong links with key European professional bodies, such as: ICDE, EDEN, UNESCO and EFQUEL. I have published extensively in the field, with over 1000 academic outputs to date. The ‘Contemporary perspectives in e-learning’ book (Conole and Oliver, 2007) provides a comprehensive overview of the field and has become a standard text on many masters programmes. I see collaborating with and inspiring colleagues as an importance aspect of the way I work. Grainne acted as both mentor and line manager facilitating conference attendance and production of bids and research papers that provided a springboard for my research career. Grainne’s influence at the University of Southampton extended beyond elearning towards more generic teaching and learning innovation. Grainne also championed elearning across the University at a strategic level, the colleagues she brought together still meet and shape policy and elearning development within the University which now has elearning groups working at the strategic and operational levels.  Dr Martin Dyke, Southampton University, 9th March 2012 I have an international reputation in the field, as is evident from the numerous invited keynotes and workshop I give at conferences around the world. Gráinne is an expert in e-learning and a good public speaker.  Maggie McPherson, Senior Lecturer, Leeds University, November 7, 2007 Recent keynotes include: the e-learning summit (Sydney), Edmedia (Toronto), ASCILTE (Auckland), ICDE (Bali) and IADIS (Rome). These provide a valuable means of reaching the wider teaching community, helping them to think about the implications of new technologies and how they can be used in their teaching. The workshops provide more in-depth opportunities for participants to explore the resources I have developed. I have also been invited to be on the advisory panel for the Spanish speaking Horizon report on emergent technologies. I try to ensure my research work translates into practical outputs, in the form of workshop and guidelines on effective use of technologies to support learning and policy briefs on technologies and their implications for learning and teaching. My role had always been to work on policy and strategy developments in e-learning; such as leading on the development of policy on the use and integration of learning technologies and coordinating response to external policy and strategy debates My role has been one of technology leadership and integration of innovations. I have acted as a catalyst for change in the use of learning technologies, leading to a significant and tangible shift in the perception of the use of learning technologies. I have always adopted a very ‘hands-on’ approach and believe I demonstrated an ability to translate vision and ideas into practical, measurable outcomes. I have an institutional brief in terms of promoting and supporting e-learning research and innovation, through involvement in relevant committees and contribution to university events. I feel the most valuable aspect of this is collaboration with colleagues on e-learning projects. This ensures that the research feeds into practice, and enables me to establish good working relationships, helping to contribute to enhancing research capacity in pedagogical and e-learning research. Once again, as the focus of e-learning has developed, my work has fallen into four phases. Phase One - Multimedia Over the years I have developed a range of staff development materials and workshops, as well as structured toolkits to help guide practice and enable practitioners to adopt more innovative practices. These have included the Media Advisor toolkit, which enabled practitioners to make informed use of technologies and an evaluation toolkit, to enable them to evaluate the impact of new learning innovations.  National strategy and policy for HE sit within a context of rapid technological change that provides immense opportunities. Technologies have now become integrated into the core business of institutions. I led on a JISC-funded project, LADIE, which developed a reference model for learning design. I was part of a team which evaluated the lessons learnt from the JISC MLE programme and authored the organisational culture sector of an associated Infonet kit. More broadly, I have worked at a policy level, providing advice at a strategic level on technology developments. I believe that to achieve change there is a need to adopt both a top-down and bottom-up approach, the former by working with senior management and through appropriate committees and strategy developments, the later through working directly with practitioners. Practitioners are interested in exploring the impact of new technologies on their teaching, whilst funding bodies have become increasingly aware of the importance of formative evaluation to distil lessons learnt from innovative e-learning projects. With funding from BP and JISC, I developed a toolkit, which supported the development of an evaluation plan - from the initial scoping of evaluation questions and selection of research methods through to presentation of findings. In the EU-funded project X-Delia, we have developed a Design and Evaluation framework. This work overall has enabled me to develop pragmatic evaluation tools to help practitioners better understand their own teaching practice and to evaluate the impact of new learning interventions they design. Phase two - The emergence of the Internet I have actively promoted the use of technologies through the use of the Internet. These have included numerous online seminars and events exploring different aspects of the use of technology and critiquing the role of e-learning with practitioners. Last year for example I participated in the 48-hour ‘Follow the sun conference’ where I gave an overview of current e-learning research. Recently, I presented online on the notion of open practices and their implications for learning, teaching and research. VLEs are now core applications within institutions, however arguably they are mainly used as content repositories and are not promoting more innovative pedagogies. At Leicester we have just completed an audit of the use of our VLE, through surveys and interviews with staff and students. This is giving us rich insights into teacher practice and the learner experience, which we will use to develop support materials to promote the use of the VLE and dissemination of good practice to help colleagues improve the learner experience. I was a critical friend for four institutions under the HEA e-learning pathfinders programme and provided them with advice on promoting the uptake and use of technologies. Phase three - New approaches to promoting the use of technologies At Bristol and Southampton, I developed a range of research interests including the creation of a new learning design methodology. These were very much practically focused and aimed at helping teachers make more effective use of technologies.  Through national and internationally-funded projects, I explored how technologies could be used to support learning. Practitioners now have a multitude of learning theories that they can use to guide the development of learning activities. In addition there is now a rich variety of technologies than can be used in innovative ways to support the implementation of these learning activities. Despite this, the actual range of learning activities that demonstrate both a variety of pedagogical approaches and innovative use of technologies is limited. Practitioners lack the necessary skills to make informed choices about using these theories and tools, and are confused by the plethora of choices. I am interested in aiding the better understanding of the process of design, to make more informed judgements in designing learning activities. At Southampton, I was involved with the JISC/NSF-funded project DialogPlus involved Education, Electronics and Computer Science, and Geography. It developed e-learning materials in Geography and a learning design tool, which was one of the first tools to be created to help teachers rethink their design practice. This is a good example of a cross-disciplinary initiative where educational and technical expertise was applied to implementation and embedding within a subject discipline. I led a JISC-funded learner experience project, which gave me rich insights into students’ use and perception of technologies. At the OU, I was part the Institute of Educational Technology, which has a dual function in terms of research and institutional service. I worked with colleagues across the university to promote the use of technologies. An important strand of my work was the development of a new methodology in learning design, aimed at helping practitioners make more effective use of technologies that are pedagogically informed. I led the OU Learning Design Initiative, which created a range of learning design tools, resources and activities. The initiative has been extremely successful and has produced a range of learning design tools, resources and activities. It has been evaluated extensively, within the OU, nationally and internationally and has attracted funding from JISC through the Curriculum Design programme and through the EU Leonardo programme. As part of this I have recently submitted a book to Springer, entitled, ‘Designing for learning in an open world’ (Conole, Forthcoming). I developed an innovative social networking site, Cloudworks, which is designed to promote sharing and discussing of learning and teaching ideas. The site is now used extensively worldwide. I have also developed a set of conceptual design tools, which help practitioners rethink their design practice and shift from a focus on content to activities. I believe learning design provides an effective mechanism to guide practitioners’ design practice and to enable them to create pedagogically sound learning interventions, which make effective use of technologies. I have run hundreds of workshops worldwide using these resources. Evaluation of these is very positive; participants describe them as inspirational, thought provoking, engaging, and creative and above all practical and pedagogically focussed. The sessions are highly participative, supported through online spaces using the Cloudworks site, which provides them with a rich set of resources and a space to share and discuss their learning and teaching ideas. In my current role, my brief is to ensure that e-learning research has more impact on policy and practice at Leicester. This is being achieved through collaborations with the University’s colleges. My centre has a dual function of doing e-learning research and providing support and advice on the use of technologies. To guide this I have developed a technology intervention framework, which will ensure that research informs policy and practice. Phase four - OER, social and participatory media I am an active user of social and participatory media. I have a blog and use tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ extensively. I see use of these tools as two-way: both to promote and disseminate e-learning research and to provide guidance and support to others. I undertook a review of the use of social and participatory media as part of an HE Academy commissioned study, which provides an important benchmark on new media and their implications for learning. I am interested in exploring how these technologies can and are being used by teachers and learners, as well as their implications for formal institutions. I am exploring how these technologies can be used to promote more open practices, in design, delivery, scholarship and research.  Promotion of the use of OER is another approach I have used to change practice. At the OU I was involved in the establishment of the OpenLearn repository and was part of the core team on the follow-on project (funded by Hewlett) called Olnet, linking OER researchers with practitioners, so that research findings can inform practice. I also lead at the OU on the EU-funded project, OPAL, which reviewed over 60 OER initiatives worldwide, and from these developed a set of OER practices which were then translated into guidelines for OER stakeholders (learners, teachers, institutional managers and policy makers). These are been used as the benchmark for existing practice and to create a vision and implementation plan. OPAL work has had and will continue to have influence in EU Government circles Summary Part of my role in all of my posts has been to act as a ‘change agent’ and to translate research findings into policy and practice. This has included lobbying at senior management level and has resulted in a significant shift in the Universities’ perspectives on learning technologies. As a complement to this I have been involved in the formulation of learning technology policy and internal strategy (including presentation to senior management and the board of Governors) and externally through involvement with ALT, JISC and ESRC. In 2010, I presented on behalf of the OU’s Vice Chancellor a review of e-learning pedagogies to the HEFCE task force on e-learning. Developing excellence It has been exciting to be in at the early stages of the emergence of a field and to see it develop and mature; and indeed to be one of the people who is helping to shape the field. I have watch as the Internet moved from being a peripheral innovation to an integrated part of all aspects of society. I have seen how mobiles have developed to a stage where they can now provide innovative learning platforms. I have seen how new social and participatory media can now provide learners and teachers with a plethora of ways to communicate and collaborate. I see myself as a reflective practitioner and strive to constantly improve my practice. My interests have developed from a subject-based passion in teaching and learning innovation and, in particular, evaluation of the impact of technology on education. My approach is pragmatic and driven by a desire to improve teacher practice and enhance the learner experience. My theoretical perspective is socio-cultural in nature drawing on the work of Vygotsky, Engeström and others. I am interested in understanding what Mediating Artefacts are being used in learning and teaching, and have applied this concept to their use in learning design. I use a Design-Based Research methodology, as I believe this is the best approach to tackle the complex and evolving field of study I am engaged with. I use my blog as a means of reflecting on my research and its impact on my professional practice. I post emergent ideas, draft publications, workshop outlines and thoughts on emergent research in the field. I use social media extensively to disseminate my ideas and research and to participate in a global community of those interested in learning and teaching. For example, I have made the chapters of my forthcoming book available via dropbox and have received numerous insightful comments from the research community, which has significantly improved the quality of the final product. I hope that I provide valuable support and inspiration to colleagues through interactions online and face-to-face. Gráinne is an outstanding individual who manages to combine criticality with creativity, while at the same time being a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging person to work with. Patrick Fullick, Southampton University, April 24 2009 I have built my experience over the years by active participation in many national and international bodies. I have been a member of many national and international bodies associated with e-learning and have served on the programming committees for international conferences. I was extensively involved with the Association for Learning Technology and was the editor of the research journal, ALT-J (now Research in Learning Technology) for nine years. I have been a chair or a member of numerous advisory boards, steering committees and consultative forums at national level. I have run workshops for national organisations such as ALT, CTI, ESRC, JISC, RSC, BECTA and the HE Academy. Part of my evolving development as a researcher has been around reflecting on the nature of the field. E-learning is applied and interdisciplinary involving researchers from a wide range of backgrounds, as well as teaching subject experts who engage with it as ‘end users’. This collaboration is a strength, but it is important that we develop a clearer articulation of the domain and a shared language. These will help to develop a better theoretical underpinning for understanding and describing research findings. Too much of the focus to date has been on anecdotal small-scale studies, which lack methodological rigour or a sound theoretical basis. I have been actively involved in methodological debates in the field. For example, through a ‘hotseat’ debate associated with the 2010 Networked Learning conference and through the production of a research briefing on TEL research for the TEL TLRP programme. Collaborating with colleagues is an important and inspiring aspect of my practice. I have been lucky enough to work with some of the leading international researchers in the field and find co-constructing new ideas exciting and motivating: Professor Conole is a talented researcher with an outstanding International profile. She has a strong publication record and a particular flair for analysing and representing the processes involved in technology enhanced learning. She has led a large number of externally funded research projects, is an acknowledged leader of the field of learning design, and an inspiring and productive co-researcher. Professor Eileen Scanlon, Open University, February 2 2012 I believe that e-learning research findings should be of practical and tangible benefit. I have been actively involved in researching methodological issues associated with e-learning research and in promoting a more rigorous approach to research in this area. This included my involvement: as a co-director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, Southampton promoting innovations in methodology and research capacity building, my editorship of a leading journal in this area, ALT-J, contributions to national debates on e-learning research and a series of positional papers on research methodological issues. This work gave me valuable insights into which theories and methodologies are shaping the field. My experiences of the establishment of the research centres I have been involved with have shaped my development as a researcher and practitioner. Learning technologies are constantly changing. As such it is imperative that there is a close link between e-learning research findings, strategy and staff development. Research can forge a better understanding of technologies, by providing evidence of their educational benefits and cost-effective impact. Staff development can then build on this to provide appropriate support and guidance and exemplars of good practice. Finally, I believe that anyone wanting to explore the use of technologies to support learning should experience being an online learner. I found taking two online courses in Spanish at the OU invaluable and they have been core to shaping my evolving ideas for future research activities. Conclusion The pace of change in Education is extraordinary: we are moving towards a future where access to technology is the norm, where smart technologies infiltrate all aspects of our lives, and where high-quality information and expert knowledge are marketable commodities. We can expect further, and perhaps more rapid, change in organisational structures and working patterns. It will be a major challenge to examine and predict the extent to which these opportunities might divide or bring together aspects of our society. I believe the work I have done has helped individuals and institutions to grapple with these issues and to make more effective use of technologies. To conclude, the importance of e-learning is undisputed. It offers tantalising benefits, but also poses daunting challenges. To address these we need to have methodologically rigorous research. My approach has been to collaborate with staff demonstrating the benefits and potential of e-learning. I believe that the approach I have adopted- open access, encouragement and support, external collaboration and a rigorous approach to research which informs strategy and staff development - represents the way forward for the development and successful integration of learning technologies within the university sector as a whole. Many people have told me that my work is innovative and inspirational and that they have drawn on it to transform practice. I hope that my application demonstrates the impact my work has had, both at a policy and practice level. References Conole, G. (Forthcoming). Designing for learning in an open world. New York: Springer. Conole, G. and Oliver, M. (2007). Contemporary perspectives in e-learning research: themes, methods and impact on practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Web links: http://e4innovation.com and http://cloudworks.ac.uk  

Ld mooc workshop from Grainne Conole I am very excited to be part of a team developing a Learning Design Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), which will be delivered in October 2012. As part of our preparation for this I attended a workshop at the OU last week. This blog post describes the outputs produced in the team I was part of which consists of myself, Ale Armellini and Anna Page. The first activity was to articulate the main personas involved in the MOOC; from those involved in designing and delivering it, to those who are expected to participate. For each person a persona profile was created, articulating who the person was, how they were involved and what they expected to get out of being involved. In addition, we clarified where the course would take place, the nature of the interactions with others (i.e. the how) and the perceived benefits of being involved. The output from this is shown in the first slide. Personas include ‘Anna’ a 34-year old lecturer, Alice, a 24-year old PhD student, who is one of the course facilitators and Jack a 48-year old teacher who is part of the course design team. The next slide shows the Course View map for the course. It articulates the following aspects: i) what type of guidance and support is provided, ii) what kinds of activities and content will the learners use, iii) what kinds of communication and collaborative activities will they be involved with, and iv) what kinds of reflection and demonstration are the learners expected to complete. The final slide shows the storyboard for the course. Learning outcomes are listed at the top left hand side. Along the centre are the e-tivities included. For each e-tivity associated resources and tools are listed, along with any outputs created by the learners. So for example, in e-tivity 1 the learners are required to view a ppt screencast on learning design, watch a view, and read a pdf. They then post a blog post reflecting on these materials and what they have learnt, as well as commenting on two other blog posts produced by co-learners. In e-tivity 2 they google the phrase ‘Learning Design theory’, read a chapter and then work collaboratively to synthesise what they have found on a wiki. In e-tivity 3 they contribute to a Discussion Forum, which is facilitated by a tutor. Finally, in e-tivity 4 they synthesise all the resources they have collated and the discussions they have taken part in, to produce a final, assessed 1, 000 word essay or equivalent. The stages of learning they engage with are also listed (i.e. reflection, collation, collaborative aggregation, discussion and application). Finally, the criteria associated with the summative assignment are listed.

I am honoured to have been invited to do a keynote at the ICEM conference in September. Here is the abstract for my talk. Design is arguably the key challenge facing practitioners today. Social and participatory media offer a plethora of ways in which teachers and learners can communicate and collaborate. Smart phones and tablets mean that mobile learning is now a reality; learners can learn anywhere, anytime. Virtual worlds and serious games offer authentic, immersive environments that can be used to foster role-play and problem-based learning. However, teachers and learners lack the necessary digital literacy skills (Jenkins 2009)to make effective use of these technologies. Learning Design has emerged in the last ten years or so as a means of addressing this (See Beetham and Sharpe 2007; Lockyer, Bennett et al. 2008). The talk will consider these issues and present a new Learning Design methodology that aims to provide practitioners with guidance and support, to enable them to make pedagogically informed design decisions that make innovative use of new technologies. The methodology was originally developed in the Open University UK (http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/OULDI/) and also incorporates work carried out at Leicester University on a series of Carpe Diem Learning Design workshops (http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance/carpe-diem-folder/). Conole provides a detailed account of the methodology (Conole Forthcoming). The methodology consists of three aspects: visual design representations, mechanisms to foster sharing and discussion of learning and teaching ideas, and a series of tailored workshops. The talk will situate this Learning Design work within the broader context of design thinking and will draw analogies with related research such as instructional design, pedagogical patterns and Open Educational Resources (OER). Our recent work, as part of the JISC-funded project SPEED (http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance/projects/speed), will be presented. The project has collated a wealth of Learning Design resources and packaged them into an online offering, which will be trialled in the autumn with four partner institutions. This will also be used in a forthcoming Learning Design Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and will form the basis of a module on Learning Design as part of a new Masters in Learning Innovation at Leicester University. Finally, the talk will conclude by considering how the Learning Design methodology presented can foster creativity and enable practitioners to think beyond content to learning activities and the ultimate learner experience. It will present the concept of a Learning Design ecology that illustrates a vision of design building on prior resources and designs, which harnesses the power of social and participatory media. References Beetham, H. and R. Sharpe (2007). Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital age: Designing and Delivering E-Learning, Routledge %@ 0415408741 %7 New edition. Conole, G. (Forthcoming). Designing for learning in an open world. New York, Springer. Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century, Mit Pr.            Lockyer, L., S. Bennett, et al. (2008). Handbook of Research on Learning Design and Learning Objects: Issues, Applications and Technologies, IGI Global %@ 1599048612 %7 illustrated edition.                

We have recently upgraded to BlackBoard 9.1 and we have taken the opportunity to develop some pedagogical templates to help teachers create courses based around different pedagogical models. We have developed four to date: A calendar-based approach A topic-based approach A project/case study based approach A problem-based learning approach I was tasked with developing a template for the problem-based learning approach. What is it? This structure is useful for inquiry-based modules, where students find or explore materials/activities to investigate/solve the problems or cases. It is particularly useful for Science courses, where the students focus on a problem that needs investigating. It is a good example of a constructivist approach to learning. The structure is based around starting with the problem to be solved, which is usually in the form of a question. Students are provided with advice on how to tackle the problem and given suggestions of resources to investigate. The problem can be tackled individually or in groups. The jigsaw pedagogical pattern is a good way of structuring a group-based activity. In this a group of 4 students are given different aspects of the problem to investigate. All the students looking at one aspect of the problem then get together with other students in other groups to share their findings. Then they return to their home team and share their collective understanding. What does it look like? The interdisciplinary iScience BSc at the University of Leicester is based on Problem-Based Learning. Each module begins with a key Science problem, such as comparing whether humans can run as fast as machines or issues around ecology and climate change. The students are presented with the problem and provided with advice on how to tackle it. Each topic addresses at least two discipline perspectives, including Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Ecology. In addition, they are provided with support on any competences they need to develop such as Mathematical or computing skills. Below are a few screenshots from the iScience course.  The course is organised into folders around a series of substantive interdisciplinary topics; each topic folder then contains links to relevant resources, expert sessions, group allocation (much of the work on the course is group based), brainstorming documents and any quizzes. Finally, there are a series of sub-folders articulating the key problem that the students are expected to investigate. For example, for the ‘Near Space’ module there is a link to a pdf, which begins with the question: ‘What information regarding glaciation on Mars  (and other planets) can we gain from study of glaciers on Earth?’ The document then goes on to articulate relevant information and provides the students with suggestions for how to go about their research. Figure 1: A screenshot of the first level of folders for the course Figure 2: Screenshot of the folders in the Science of the Invisible topic Figure 3: Screenshot of the documentation associatted with the frozen worlds topic Further information http://www.studygs.net/pbl.htm http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/cebe/themes/pbl http://www.learningdesigns.uow.edu.au/exemplars/index.html#problem    

I’m delighted that the special issue of Distance Education I was guest editor for is now out and even more delighted that it is open access! Enjoy! Comments welcome! The focus of the issue was on Open Educational Resources (OER) and social inclusion. There are some great contributions in there well worth a read!

A couple of things recently have got me thinking about the pros and cons of moving to the cloud. Firstly, my professional website (e4innovation.com) has been hosted on siteground, for which I pay an annual subscription. Trouble is I have lost my password to access it and it is still registered with my old OU email account. I have contacted them to update to my Leicester email, so that I can access it. Also I seem to remember changing themes etc. is a bit fiddly. My personal blog (gconole.wordpress.com) is hosted by wordpress and I have found it much easier to use and I like the themes available. So I am thinking of transferring my professional blog too, as I can’t see the advantage of having to pay an annual subscription. OK I admit there is a comprise e4innovation.wordpress.com won’t be as nice a name as e4innovation.com but it seems a small price to pay. Secondly, I am thinking of transferring my pictures to the cloud as one of the (few) disadvantages of the mac book air is the storage capacity. I am not sure what to use, but plan to look at iCloud and Dropbox as options. So this got me thinking. What are the pros and cons of this? How safe and secure are these cloud services? To lose all my blog posts or pictures would be devastating!  But I guess these services are pretty secure, as they have to be right? What are your thoughts on this? Have others got similar dilemmas?

The focus of our JISC-funded SPEED project is the cascading of our 7Cs of Learning Design resources to four partner institutions: Derby, Liverpool John Moores, Northampton and London South Bank. We have now run two workshops which have gone very well and are in the processes of refining the resources. We have a comprehensive suite of activities and resources available in the few BlackBoard tool, CourseSites. In all there are 23 activities for participants to complete. The initial activities are covered in a one-day face-to-face workshop, the remainder will be completed asynchronously between now and Christmas. In terms of the activity around assessment I have updated the learning outcomes map, which aligns the activities the learners engage with to the learning outcomes and assessment elements. To aid this I have created a Powerpoint presentation; see below. The first slide is a general template and the second an example.   Learning outcomes map from Grainne Conole

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!