Stephen has written some valuable comments on my ‘Defining OEP’ blog post. Couple of minor things in my defence and then some more subtaintive points to discuss!  Clearly my choice of picture to show the meeting was not a good one given Stephen’s reaction!

…but a conference session consisting of standing in a circle around flip-chart sheets would send me running and screaming into the nearest woods, never to be found again. So, please, let’s not make that an open education practice

 Ooops!

Actually the meeting was excellent with a nice mix of different types of group work, use of flip charts, illustrative art drawings to capture key points, images on flckr etc. I found this a great mix and much better than the usual sit round in boardroom style meetings with one person dominating the meeting. Maybe we could have used more technology during the meeting but actually I think the face to face interactions were a key part of us connecting as a consortium at this point in the project.

Stephen critiques my initial starter for ten diagram which articulates the 4 different types of stakeholders involved in OER/OEP arguing that

…so, I’m not sure I like a model where ‘policy-makers’ (also called ’stakeholders’) are distinct from ‘creators’ and ‘users’ - people who create and use should make the policy, in my view.

Clearly the diagram isn’t quite right yet, my intention was never to suggest that the four roles were distinct and separate, rather that they are four aspects which have different agendas and interests. A ‘learner’ could very easily be involved in all four, but at each stage – when they are looking at creating, using, managing or ‘policy-making’ OER they will have a different focus of attention and it was this that I really wanted to bring out and explore.

Good to have some early feedback on this – I think there is a lot to trash out in terms of exactly what OEP is. I am reminded of some work I did a few years ago as part of the NSF/JISC DIalogPlus project. The aim (a naïve one now I admit) was to create a learning design guidance toolkit that would take practitioners through the process of creating learning activities. It would provide guidance and advice on pedagogical approaches, what technologies can be used when and why and a process of mapping learning outcomes, topics, activities and assessment tasks. The toolkit is still around if you want to play. Near the beginning of the work I thought ‘hang on a minute – what exactly do we mean by a learning activity anyway?’ A seemingly simple question… which turned into a mammoth amount of work and a very detailed taxonomy articulating the different components that make up a learning activity! More on the details of this are available in a chapter on the Handbook of Learning Design and Learning Objects by Lockyer et al. (Conole, G. 2008). I have a funny feeling something similar might happen with OEP – i.e. it seems obvious what it is, and easy to articulate it, but I suspect in reality the task will be much more complex.

Reference

Conole, G., 2008. Capturing practice, the role of mediating artefacts in learning design. In In L. Lockyer, S. Bennett, S. Agostinhi and B. Harper Handbook of learning designs and learning objects.  IGI Global.

 

 

This blog post is a draft of a paper I am working on following on from a keynote I did at the University of Limerick in May. It focuses on new ideas around the design and reuse of Open Educational Resources (OER). My initial thinking around this can be found in an earlier blog post.

The technology paradox

A paradox exists in terms of harnessing new technologies in education.  Despite the fact that there is now a wealth of free tools and resources available that could be used to support learning and teaching, in reality technologies are not used extensively in education. Indeed teachers and learners are bewildered by the variety and lack the time and necessary skills to harness them effectively. The focus of this paper is to present Learning Design as a potential solution and in particular to describe the work we are doing as part of the Open University Learning Design Initiative (OULDI), which is developing a suite of tools and resources to support teachers to make more effective design decisions and better use of technologies in the creation of learning activities and resources for their students. The paper will highlight current research on Pedagogical Patterns, Learning Design and Open Educational Resources (OER) and will suggest that together these three areas provide a possible solution to the mismatch between the potential of new technologies and use in practice. It will conclude with an illustrative example being developed as part of a new initiative, Olnet, which is a global network to support users and researchers of OER.

Redefining openness

I argue in this paper that we need to expand the notion of openness, to take account of the affordances of new technologies and the new patterns of user behaviour we are seeing emerge. There has been a growth in recent years in activities around the Open source movement and the development of open tools and services, also the open educational resource movement (Iiyoshi & Kumar 2008). These have a common set of principles and practices: free, shared, collaborative, cumulatively better. The next logical step is a more “open” approach to design (Open Design) – where the inherent designs within learning activities and resources are made more explicit to learners and to other teachers; so that they can be picked up discussed and adapted.

 I argue in this paper that education is now facing a number of new challenges, precipitating by new technologies. Education today, operates in a context that is increasingly open and abundant:

·      Open – In terms of free resources and in terms of public gauze/scrutiny and can no longer ignore this.

·      Abundant - There are now a wealth of tools, services and resources available to support education. If tools and resources are freely available, what is the purpose of formal educational institutions?

Examples of openness include the growth of the open source moment in general and, more specifically in education, the phenomenal success of the open source Moodle tool. Moodle is now a major Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)/Learner Management System (LMS) around the world, with a large community of active developers collectively improving the core code and adding extensions and plug-ins. There are increasingly sophisticated free generic tools available - Google apps, Gmail, free blog and wiki services, communication tools such as Skype to Twitter. New products are emerging all the time, introducing new concepts and patters of user behaviour – the latest being Google Wave, which is being hyped as the next generation communication tool, a combination of email, discussion forums and wikis – enabling both synchronous and asynchronous communication.

There has been a noticeable shift in the last few years in terms of the use of technologies. We now have near ubiquitous access with wifi-enabled Internet on demand. New generation phones such as iPhone make mobile learning genuinely feasible. The number and variety of applications for the iphone is truly mind blowing; the variety of applications for learning staggering, from mindmapping tools, through digital books and dictionaries to interactive learning tutorials. More and more material for learning is available for free on the Internet. This has been accelerated by the growth of the OER movement, which believes that education should be free and is a basic right. The OER movement has powerful supporters, especially the Hewlett foundation and UNESCO and include big international players such as MIT. The OpenCourseWare consortium has over 200 worldwide members. A range of different types of OERs and models are available which differ in terms of level of granularity, format and media richness, and type of pedagogy. The Open University launched Openlearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) in 2006 with funded from the William and Flora Hewlett foundation.

Today’s students have grown up surrounded by a technologically mediated world. Clearly new technologies offer much in an educational context, with the promise of flexible, personalised and student-centred learning. Indeed research over the past few years, looking at learners’ use of technologies, has given us a rich picture of how learners of all ages are appropriating new tools within their own context, mixing different applications for finding/managing information and for communicating with others (Sharpe and Beetham, forthcoming). They provide a summary of recent research looking at the learner perspective and in particular how learners are using technologies (Sharpe & Beetham 2010). It is evident that today’s learners are immersed in a technologically rich learning environment. They see technologies as an essential part of their tools for learning. They appropriate technologies to suit their own learning styles and use them to support all aspects of their learning. However despite having grown up in a technological environment, not all students are able to use technologies effectively in an academic context. For example they may be comfortable using Google, but not competent at critically evaluating different resources and using them for their learning. Indeed for the weaker students the complexity of the range of digital tools and resources available to them means they are more likely to get confused and lost.

Good sources of further information on current technology trends and the ways in which technologies are being used in education include: Review of learning 2.0 (Ala-Mutka, 2009), Learner experience work (Conole, De Laat et al., 2008), NSF cyberlearning task force report (NSF, 2008), and a review of OER movement (Atkins et al., 2007)

Education for free

Theoretically one can now put together totally free course offerings using free tools and resources. George Siemens and Stephen Downes created an ambitious course and delivered it for the first time in 2009 – not only were the tools and resources they used in the course free, but so was the expertise! See http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/?p=182 for a reflection on the experiment by George Siemens. The twelve-week course was called ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Online Course’.[1]  They described the course as a MOOG (Massive Open Online Course). The content, delivery and support for the course was totally free, anyone could join and an impressive 2400 did, although the actual number of very active participants was smaller (ca. 200). The course provides a nice example of an extension of the open movement, moving a step beyond the Open Educational Resource movement to providing a totally free course. Siemens reflecting on the course said the follow:

Did we change the world? No. Not yet. But we (and I mean all course participants, not just Stephen and I) managed to explore what is possible online. People self-organized in their preferred spaces. They etched away at the hallowed plaque of “what it means to be an expert”. They learned in transparent environments, and in the process, became teachers to others. Those that observed (or lurked as is the more common term), hopefully found value in the course as well. Perhaps life circumstances, personal schedule, motivation for participating, confidence, familiarity with the online environment, or numerous other factors, impacted their ability to contribute. While we can’t “measure them” the way I’ve tried to do with blog and moodle participants, their continued subscription to The Daily and the comments encountered in F2F conferences suggest they also found some value in the course.

 

 George Siemens and Martin Weller delivered something similar in the form of an ‘un-course’ conference (“From Courses to Dis-Course (yes/no? Am I being too cute-sy?”). See http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/blogs/futurecourse/ for further information. Such courses are becoming more commonplace, the immediacy of the Internet and the variety of free tools for creating content and for communicating with others, means these courses can be set up very quickly with an international team designing and delivering. What kind of impact will such courses have on traditional educational offerings? Will they sit alongside them or ultimately replace them?

Implications and the hidden conundrum

Clearly all this has profound implications for educational institutions and the provision of formal education (Grainne Conole 2009). For students in terms of the skills and experiences they come with and their expectations in terms of technologies (Sharpe & Beetham 2010)(G. Conole et al. 2008). For teachers in terms of how they design courses for students. For institutions in terms of how they support and assess students. New technologies give rise to a range of questions: To what extent have all these free tools and resources impacted on mainstream education? To what extent are the majority of teachers capitalising on these? How much are mainstream courses changing as a result?

The reality is that despite the enormous potential new technologies seem to offer for learning, uptake of them and utilisation of free resources has been slow.  Indeed there has been very little impact on mainstream education. Where technolgoies are used a lot of the use mirrors existing face-to-face practice, rather than harnessing the powerful affordances associated with them. There is little evidence of major innovations or new forms of pedagogy.

The reasons for the lack of impact of these new technologies are complex and multifaceted. But one of the key ones is that teachers lack the time and expertise to make best use of new tools and resources. Faced with a new tool – say a wiki or twitter - there are a number of questions a teacher (or indeed a learner) needs to consider: What are the special features of the tool? How can it be used to support learning? How have others used the tool? What are the implications in terms of designing and delivering a learning activity using this tool – for the teacher, for the student? Similarly just having freely available OERs is not enough, a series of similar questions arise: What is the quality of the resource? How has it been used elsewhere? How can it be incorporated into my teaching context? Am I able to adapt it; how much do I need to change to suit my teaching context? All of these are non-trivial and time-consuming questions.

Mediating artefacts to support design

Teachers need guidance in understanding how they can appropriate technologies in their teaching. This guidance can be in the form of a range of ‘Mediating Artefacts’ (MAs). I draw on socio-cultural perspectives (Vygotsky 1978;  Cole et al. 1997; Engeström et al. 1999; Daniels et al. 2007), in terms of the use of the term ‘Mediating Artefacts’ (MAs). I believe the concept of mediating artefacts can help us describe and understand how technologies are being used in mediating our practice. A user intent on achieve a particular goal has a range of mediating artefacts they can draw on; both in terms of ‘information’ and mechanisms for ‘communication’. Alongside the established communication channels of the telephone, email, forums and texting, the emergence of web 2.0 technologies in recent years has added blogging (and microblogging), wikis, social networking sites and virtual worlds but also free internet-based Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and in particular popular tools such as Skype which enable virtually free, internet-based communication. Similarly information can now be distributed in multiple locations, and packaged and presented using a range of different multimedia and visual representations. Sophisticated repositories now exist for everything from shopping categories to repositories of good practice and free resources. RSS feeds and email alerts enable users to filter and personalise the information they receive. Social bookmarking and tagging means that collective value can be added to digital objects, concept and mind mapping, tag clouds and data-derived maps are only some of the ways in which information can be presented in rich and multifaceted ways.

I argue in this paper that there is a need for new mediating artefacts to support teachers and learners in making best use of these tools and resources.  See Conole (2008a) for a description of the use of the term mediating artefacts specifically for learning design. These mediating artefacts can guide and support the teacher in making design decisions. They can provide mechanisms to help teachers answer questions like those posed above, to help them make decisions on which tools and resources to use and in what ways. For example mechanisms to provide them with access to help and advice, expertise and peer support. Mechanisms to enable them to become part of an evolving peer community committed to discussing and sharing learning and teaching ideas.

I argue that this mediation is through more explicit articulation of the inherent designs associated with a particular learning activity and the way in which tools and resources are used in that particular learning activity. If we can abstract these designs and represent them in a meaningful and understandable way there is a greater chance of them being picked up, used and adapted by others, which, in turn, over time is likely to lead to an evolving understanding of how new tools and resources can be used.

Converging schools of thought

I want to focus on three types of Mediating Artefacts and look at how together they can be used to help guide the teacher’s design practice; learning design, pedagogical patterns and OER Mediating Artefacts. A brief introduction to these areas will be provided, followed by a description of how they can be used together to provide a holistic approach to designing for learning.

Pedagogical patterns

The concept of Pedagogical Patterns derives from Alexander’s work in Architecture, towards pattern languages for buildings.  Applied to an educational context, it is concerned with exploring how we generate a set of ‘patterns for good practice’; i.e. here is a problem and here is a tried and tested solution. There is now a considerable body of research on Pedagogical Patterns, such as the work of Yannis Dimitriadis and colleagues in Spain, Peter Goodyear in Australia and the Planet project in the UK. There are a number of repositories of patterns with surrounding communities of interest, see for example http://lp.noe-kaleidoscope.org/ and http://patternlanguagenetwork.org/partners/. Two well-known examples of patterns for collaborative learning are: “Think, Pair, Share” and “Jigsaw”.

The benefits of the pedagogical patterns approach is that the ‘patterns’ are derived from known, tried and tested examples, building on existing good practice. They all have the same format of representation – here is a problem and a potential solution, along with a powerful visual metaphors.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

The OER movement has concentrated on developing open educational resources and studying the ways in which they are used and/or adapted by learners and teachers (See for example McAndrew and Santos, 2008). The benefits of the OER movement is that it is building a word wide set of high quality free educational resources, along with opportunities to build a community around these resources - to share and critically discuss good practice in learning and teaching.

Learning design

In our own work as part of the OU Learning Design Initiative (OUDLI) we are developing a suite of tools and methods to help teachers with the design process and in particular to enable them to create more pedagogical informed learning activities and make better use of new technologies. Our work is focusing on three aspects of the design process: ways of representing pedagogy (and in particular visualising it), providing guidance and advice, and mechanisms to enable teachers to share and discuss learning and teaching ideas. In particular we have developed two tools – CompendiumLD for visualising and guiding the design process (G. Conole et al. 2008) and Cloudworks a social networking site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas (Conole & Culver 2009b; Conole & Culver 2009a) In addition we have been developed new schema for mapping pedagogies and technologies (Conole 2008)

The benefits of the Learning Design approach are that it provides a range of tools, methods and approaches to help teachers think differently, making the design process more explicit, means of sharing good practice.

A new understanding of design: an illustrative example

What we can see across these three areas of research are different types of designs. Can we combine these learning design tools with the documented good practice, which has been developed in the pedagogical pattern community, with the real exemplars available in the OER world? The pedagogical patterns describe a learning and teaching activity or strategy according to a predefined template. Whereas the OERs might be considered as ‘designs in action’ and provide actual learning content. Finally, Learning Designs help give us a better understanding of the broad ways in which learning and teaching activities or strategies can be represented from narrative case studies or descriptions through to visual designs.

In a new project, OLnet, we are attempting to put these three areas together, specifically to enable better use of OER. OLnet is creating a global network to help researchers and users of OER to work together – so that research outputs inform practice and vice versa. See Conole and McAndrew (Conole & McAndrew 2010). We are interested in exploring how explicit designs might be used to help learners and teachers and how the different tools and resources from across OER, Learning Design and Pedagogical Patterns research would might be used together.  In a recent book chapter we identify four types of Mediating Artefacts from across these research domains: Learning Design visualisation tools, Learning Design methods, Pedagogical Patterns and Web 2.0 sharing and discussion tools (Figure 1).

 

Figure 1: Types of mediating artefacts

The following scenario provides an example of how this might work (Figure 2). It describes the creation of an OER and an associated design for the OER and shows how this can be repurposed in three different ways. Tools and resources from OER, Learning Deign and Pedagogical Patterns research are used to help design the original OER and then to share and repurpose it.

Figure 2: Initial creation of OER+design and subsequent use and repurposing

 

Teacher A: The design phase

The scenario begins with ‘Teacher A’. The context is that Teacher A is putting her beginners’ level Spanish material for the OU course L194. She makes the material available as an OER online in the Openlearn repository (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk). She uses the CompendiumLD tool for visualising to articulate different ways in which she thinks the materials can be used. Figure 3 shows part of the visual design, including the branching sequence to enable a beginner and more advanced route through the learning materials. In particular she is interested in showing how the materials can be used as both a revision exercise for an individual student and at a more advanced level for a group of students working collaboratively. Whilst developing her design in CompendiumLD she has access to ideas and tips and hints from the Cloudworks social networking site for learning and teaching site, as well as from a range of OER and Pedagogical Pattern repositories. These help her to refine her design thinking, to get ideas about how to structure activities in the sequences and suggestions of tools that be used for example for supporting a diagnostic e-assessment test or to enable students to communicate synchronously.

Learner A: Use Scenario 1 – beginners’ route

‘Learner A’ is doing Spanish.  She is a few weeks into the intermediate level Spanish course. The topic she is currently working on is ‘describing places’, she is looking for freely available tools or resources that might help her, she is also interested in finding study buddies to work with, who are at a similar level.

1.      She explores the openlearn site

2.      She finds the set of OERs for a beginners’ Spanish course – L194 – Portales from the Open University, UK, developed by Teacher A.

3.      She finds alongside these resources a visual design – which provides an example of how these resources might be used. The design consists of the following aspects:

a.       A diagnostic e-assessment test to assess her level of understanding of the topics covered in the course

b.       Two potential pathways: a) a beginners route where the learner works individually through the L194 OER material, b) an advanced route where the learner is assigned to a study group to work collaboratively around 1 aspects of the L194 OER material, Activity 2.1. In this advanced route, the existing activity (categorise 3 pictures of buildings as Latin American or Spanish) is replaced with one where the learner has to describe and compare the buildings, working collaboratively with other students and interrogating an expert for information. The activity exploits the jigsaw pedagogical pattern and also uses a free video conferencing tool to enable the study group to speak with a Spanish cultural expert. 

4.      She takes the diagnostic tests and the advice is that she takes the beginners’ route and completes the L194 OER material.

Learner B: Use Scenario 2 – advanced route

Learner B is also a student a few weeks into an intermediate level Spanish course. She works through a similar set of activities to Learner A but in this case after taking the diagnostic test the advice is that he takes the advanced route and focuses in on the adapted activity 2.1 as a collaborative exercise with other students.

Teacher B: Use Scenario 3 – repurposes

Teacher B is an Associate Lecturer teaching on the intermediate level Spanish course at the Open University, En Rumbo – L140, preparing for a face-to-face tutorial with his students. The topic is describing places. Finds the design described above and adapts it to produce two new variants of the design 1. a classroom-based activity where the students describe the pictures using the Think-Pair-Share pattern and provides, 2. A similar exercise in terms of comparing three buildings but the students are asked to describe buildings from their town and then talk with an expert (a student in Spain) who then describes their home town. The activity is set as a precursor to the first assignment exercise for the course.

The design of this scenario represented in CompendiumLD was drawn by Andrew Brasher and an interactive version of it is available here. Figure 4 provides a conceptual overview and generalisation of this scenario – showing how an initial design can query existing resources such as Cloudworks and Openlearn, use these to help create and populate an OER, along with an associated design, both of which can then be deposited back into sites such as Cloudworks and OpenLearn for reuse.

Conclusion

The mismatch between the potential of technologies and actual use in practice is I would argue one of the most important key challenges facing modern education. The areas of Pedagogical Patterns, Learning Design and OER research have developed a range of valuable tools and resources which have proved effective in supporting teachers and learners and enabling them to decide and use educational resources more effectively. The next stage in the challenge is how to build on this; how to make more effective connections across these three areas of research.

Acknowledgements

Many people are involved in this work but want to thank in particular:

§   Olnet/Openlearn: Patrick McAndrew, Yannis Demitriadis (who is currently working with us as a visiting Olnet professor), Tina Wilson, Niall Sclater

§   OULDI: Andrew Brasher, Juliette Culver, Simon Cross, Paul Clark, Martin Weller

§   Funders: The William and Flora Hewlett foundation, the JISC, the Open University for strategic funding

References

Ala-Mutka, K., Bacigalupo, M., Kluzer, S., Pascu, C., Punie, Y. and Redecker, C. (2009). Review of Learning 2.0 Practices. IPTS technical report prepared for publication, IPTS: Seville, available online at http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=2139 [18/4/09].

Atkins, D., Seely Brown, J. and Hammond, A.L. (2007), A review of the Open Educational Resource movement: achievements, challenges and new opportunities, report to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, available online at http://www.hewlett.org/NR/rdonlyres/5D2E3386-3974-4314-8F67-5C2F22EC4F9B/0/AReviewoftheOpenEducationalResourcesOERMovement_BlogLink.pdf, last accessed 5/2/09.

Cole, M., Engeström, Y. & Vasquez, O.A., 1997. Mind, culture, and activity: Seminal papers from the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, Cambridge Univ Pr.

 

Conole, G. (2008a) ‘Capturing practice: the role of mediating artefacts in learning design’, in Handbook of Research on Learning Design and Learning Objects: Issues, Applications and Technologies, in L. Lockyer, S. Bennett, S. Agostinho, and B Harper (Eds), 187-207, Hersey PA: IGI Global.

 

Conole, G. et al., 2008. Visualising learning design to foster and support good practice and creativity. Educational Media International, 45(3), 177-194.

 

Conole, G. & Culver, J., 2009a. Cloudworks: Social networking for learning design. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25(5). Available at: http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet25/conole.html [Accessed November 24, 2009].

 

Conole, G. & Culver, J., 2009b. The design of Cloudworks: Applying social networking practice to foster the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs. Computers & Education. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCJ-4XH5640-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1107889889&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=11e571c11f3d1bee54dd010e40090093 [Accessed November 24, 2009].

 

Conole, G. et al., 2008. ‘Disruptive technologies’, ‘pedagogical innovation’: What’s new Findings from an in-depth study of students’ use and perception of technology. Computers & Education, 50(2), 511-524.

 

Conole, G. & McAndrew, P., 2010. A new approach to supporting the design and use of OER: Harnessing the power of web 2.0. In In M. Edner and M. Schiefner (Eds) Looking toward the future of technology enhanced education: ubiquitous learning and the digital nature.

 

Conole, G., McAndrew, P. & Dimitriadis, Y., The role of CSCL pedagogical patterns as mediating artefacts for repurposing Open Educational Resources’. In in F. Pozzi and D. Persico (Eds), Techniques for Fostering Collaboration in Online Learning Communities: Theoretical and Practical.  2010.

 

Conole, G., 2009. Stepping over the edge: the implications of new technologies for education. Available at: http://oro.open.ac.uk/13175/ [Accessed November 24, 2009].

 

Conole, G., 2008. New Schemas for mapping pedagogies and technologies. Ariadne magazine, (56). Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue56/conole/ [Accessed November 24, 2009].

 

Daniels, H., Cole, M. & Wertsch, J., 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky 1st ed., Cambridge University Press.

 

Dimitriadis, Y. et al., 2009. New design approaches to repurposing Open Educational Resources for collaborative learning using mediating artefacts. In  Auckland: ASCILITE.

 

Engeström, Y., Punamäki-Gitai, R.L. & Miettinen, R., 1999. Perspectives on activity theory, Cambridge University Press.

 

Iiyoshi, T. & Kumar, M.S.V., 2008. Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge, The MIT Press.

 

McAndrew, P. and A. I. Santos (Eds.) (2009). Learning from OpenLearn: Research Report 2006-2008. Milton Keynes, UK: The Open University.

NSF (2008), Fostering learning in the networked world: learning opportunity and challenge. A 21^st Century agenda for the National Science Foundation, report of the NSF task force on cyberlearning, available online at http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf08204, last accessed 8/2/09.

 

Sharpe, R. & Beetham, H., 2010. Rethinking learning for the digital age: how learnes shape their own experiences, London: Routledge.

 

Vygotsky, L.S., 1978. Mind in society.

 

 

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[1] http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Connectivism

As part of a working group at the Open University (James Fleck, Mick Jones, Tony Walton, Andrew Russell and Paul Mundin) we are trying to devise a series of course representations. We have come up with five:
•    At a glance
•    Pedagogy profile
•    Financial
•    Course performance
•    Success checklist
I’ve mainly being involved with the representations that particularly foreground the learning aspects of the course.

Figure 1 Pedagogy Profile

The pedagogy profile is a worked up version of the media advisor toolkit Martin Oliver and I developed years ago (link to download the toolkit below), modernised against task types developed as part of a learning activity taxonomy I developed a few years ago (Conole, 2008). In essence there are six types of tasks learners do:
•    Assimilative – reading, listening, viewing
•    Information handling – manipulating data or text
•    Communicative – discussing, critiqueing, etc
•    Productive – production of an essay, architectural model, etc
•    Experiential – practising, mimicking, applying, etc
•    Adaptive – modelling or simulation
In addition, learners undertake some form of assessment activities
You can then use these to create a pedagogy profile for a course – indicating the proportion of each type of tasks (Figure 1).

Figure 2: The “at a glance” representation

The ‘at a glance’ representation gives an overview of the course. It’s an adaption of an earlier pedagogy representation (see for example an earlier blog post), but Mick Jones pointed out that it was important to also emphase the instruction and guidance provided to the student. The representation now includes both guidance and support as well as evidence and demonstration (Figure 2). The representation enables you to describe the course in terms of the types of learning activities the learner is undertaking as well as the guidance and support provided and the nature of any assessment. Table 1 describes the five facets of the representation in more detail. Would welcome thoughts on these representations.

Table 1

Finally, the success checklist is intended to be an evolving list of  success criteria or ‘dos and don’ts’ for course. There are four facts considered:

• Good pedagogy
• Innovation
• Cost effectiveness
• Fitness for purpose

Table 2 shows some suggested examples.

Table 2

References

Conole, G. (2008) ‘Capturing practice: the role of mediating artefacts in learning design’, in Handbook of Research on Learning Design and Learning Objects: Issues, Applications and Technologies, in L. Lockyer, S. Bennett, S. Agostinho, and B Harper (Eds), 187-207, Hersey PA: IGI Global.

Media Advisor available to download from  http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ltri/demos/media_adviser_files/media_adviser.htm

I’m doing a keynote today at the University of Limerick, Maggie McPherson from Leeds University is doing the first keynote. It’s timely as preparation for it has enabled me to write down some thoughts following on from a number of really excellent discussions over the last couple of weeks with Patrick McAndrew, Yannis Dimitriadis, Andrew Brasher, Juliette Culver, Martin Weller, Niall Sclater and Niall Winters. Here are my notes for the presentation, the powerpoint is on slideshare.

Blues skies thinking for design and Open Educational Resources 

Gráinne Conole, The Open University, UK (g.c.conole@open.ac.uk)

Keynote

Technology and Learning: Defining Quality in Research, Theory and Practice

Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society Symposium, 2009

University of Limerick, 11^th May 2009

Focus

·        The focus of the talk is at the intersection of Design and Open Educational Resources (OER).

·        It will consider why the wealth of free tools and resources now available, that could be used to support learning and teaching, are not being used more extensively and will suggest that teachers and learners lack the time and necessary skills to harness them effectively.

·        It will highlight current research on Pedagogical Patterns, Learning Design and OER and will suggest that together these three areas provide a possible solution to the mismatch between the potential of new technologies and use in practice.

·        It will conclude with an illustrative example being developed as part of a new initiative, Olnet (http://olnet.org) (See Conole and McAndrew (submitted) for an overview of the background to OLNet).

Redefining openness

·        I will argue that we need to expand the notion of openness…

o    There has been a growth in recent years in activities around the Open source movement and the development of open tools and services, also the open educational resource movement.

o    These have a common set of principles and practices: free, shared, collaborative, cumulatively better…

o    The next logical step is a more “open” approach to design (Open Design) – where the inherent designs within learning activities and resources are made more explicit to learners and to other teachers; so that they can be picked up discussed and adapted.

·        I will argue that education is now faced with a challenge… We are operating in a context that is increasingly:

o    Open – In terms of free resources and in terms of public gauze/scrutiny and can no longer ignore this.

o    Abundant - There are now a wealth of tools, services and resources available to support education. If tools and resources are freely available, what is the purpose of formal educational institutions?

·        Examples include

o    The open source moment in general and the phenomenal success of Moodle as a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)/Learner Management System (LMS).

o    There are increasingly sophisticated free generic tools available - Google apps, Gmail, free blog and wiki services, communication tools from Skype to Twitter.

o    There has been a noticeable shift in the last few years in terms of the use of technologies

§   Now have near ubiquitous access – internet and mobile technologies

§   New generation phones such as iPhone – the world in your pocket

§   Today’s students have grown up surrounded by a technologically mediated world.

§   The growth of the OER movement, supported by the Hewlett foundation and OECD and marked by the announcement by MIT that it was making its educational resources freely available. A range of different types of OERs and models are available which differ in terms of level of granularity, format and media richness, and type of pedagogy. The Open University launched Openlearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) in 2006 with funded from the William and Flora Hewlett foundation.

o    Good sources of further information on current technology trends and use in education include: Review of learning 2.0 (Ala-Mutka, 2009), Learner experience work (Conole, De Laat et al., 2008), NSF cyberlearning task force report (NSF, 2008), review of OER movement (Atkins et al., 2007)

Education for free

Theoretically one can now put together totally free course offerings using free tools and resources.

·        George Siemens and Stephen Downes ran an ambitious course last year – not only were the tools and resources they used in the course free, but so was the expertise!. See http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/?p=182 for a reflection on the experiment by George Siemens. The twelve-week course was called ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Online Course’.[1]  They described the course as a MOOG (Massive Open Online Course). The content, delivery and support for the course was totally free, anyone could join and an impressive 2400 did, although the actual number of very active participants was smaller (ca. 200). The course provides a nice example of an extension of the open movement, moving a step beyond the Open Educational Resource movement to providing a totally free course.

·        George Siemens and Martin Weller are delivering something similar this week, in the form of an ‘un-course’ conference (“From Courses to Dis-Course (yes/no? Am I being too cute-sy?”). See http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/blogs/futurecourse/ for further information.

Implications

Clearly all this has profound implications for institutions (Conole, in press).

1.      For students in terms of the skills and experiences they come with and their expectations in terms of technologies (Conole, De Laat, 2008).

2.      For teachers in terms of how they design courses for students.

3.      For institutions in terms of how they support and assess students.

But there is a catch – the hidden conundrum

·        To what extent have all these free tools and resources impacted on mainstream education? To what extent are the majority of teachers capitalising on these? How much are mainstream courses changing as a result?

·        In reality uptake of new technologies and free resources had been slow. A lot of use of new tools mirrors existing face-to-face practice. There is little evidence of major innovations or new forms of pedagogy.

The complexity behind the simplicity

The reasons for the lack of impact of these new technologies are complex and multifaceted. But one of the key ones is that teachers lack the time and expertise to make best use of new tools and resources. Faced with a new tool – say a wiki or twitter - there are a number of questions a teacher (or indeed a learner) needs to consider:

·        What are the special features of the tool?

·        How can it be used to support learning?

·        How have others used the tool?

·        What are the implications in terms of designing and delivering a learning activity using this tool – for the teacher, for the student?

Similarly just having freely available OERs is not enough, a series of similar questions arise:

·        What is the quality of the resource?

·        How has it been used elsewhere?

·        How can it be incorporated into my teaching context?

·        Am I able to adapt it; how much do I need to change to suit my teaching context?

All of these are non-trivial and time-consuming questions.

The mediating layer

My argument in this talk is as follows:

·        Given this conundrum of a vast wealth of tools and resources, but teachers and learners lack the skills to make use of these, I will argue that there is a need for a mediating layer to support teachers and learners in making best use of these tools and resources.  See Conole (2008a) for a description of what is meant by a mediating layer and examples of mediating artefacts.

·        A mediating layer that provides mechanisms to help them answer questions like those posed above, to help them make decisions on which tools and resources to use and in what ways. For example mechanisms to provide them with access to help and advice, expertise and peer support. Mechanisms to enable them to become part of an evolving peer community committed to discussing and sharing learning and teaching ideas.

·        I will argue that this mediation is through more explicit articulation of the inherent designs associated with a particular learning activity and the way in which tools and resources are used in that particular learning activity. If we can abstract these designs and represent them in a meaningful and understandable way there is a greater chance of them being picked up, used and adapted by others, which, in turn, over time is likely to lead to an evolving understanding of how new tools and resources can be used.

Converging schools of thought

Three parallel areas of research have being working on aspects of this mediating layer – learning design, pedagogical patterns and OER research. There are signs that these areas are beginning to converge. In particular a clearer understanding of the different types of design representations is emerging.

Pedagogical patterns

·        The concept of Pedagogical Patterns derives from Alexander’s work in Architecture, towards pattern languages for buildings. 

·        Applied to an educational context – can we generate a set of ‘patterns for good practice’; i.e. here is a problem and here is a tried and tested solution.

·        There is now a considerable body of research on Pedagogical Patterns, such as the work of Yannis Dimitriadis and colleagues in Spain, Peter Goodyear in Australia and the Planet project in the UK. There are a number of repositories of patterns with surrounding communities of interest, see for example http://lp.noe-kaleidoscope.org/ and http://patternlanguagenetwork.org/partners/.

·        Two well-known examples of patterns for collaborative learning are: “Think, Pair, Share” and “Jigsaw”.

Benefits of the pedagogical patterns approach: derived from know, tried and tested examples, building on existing good practice, shared format of representation – problem + solution, and the power of visual metaphors.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

·        OER research has concentrated on developing open educational resources and studying the ways in which they are used and/or adapted by learners and teachers (See for example McAndrew and Santos, 2008).

·        Benefits: building a wordwide set of high quality free educational resources, opportunity to build a community around this to share and critically discuss good practice in learning and teaching.

Learning design

·        Learning design – in our own work as part of the OU Learning Design Initiative (OUDLI) we are developing a suite of tools and methods to help teachers with the design process and in particular to enable them to create more pedagogical informed learning activities and make better use of new technologies.

·        Our work is focusing on three aspects of the design process: ways of representing pedagogy (and in particular visualising it), providing guidance and advice, and mechanisms to enable teachers to share and discuss learning and teaching ideas.

·        In particular we have developed two tools – CompendiumLD for visualising and guiding the design process (Conole, Brasher et al., Submitted; Conole, Brasher et al., 2008), and Cloudworks a social networking site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas (Conole and Culver, submitted; Conole, Culver et al, 2008). In addition we have been developed new schema for mapping pedagogies and technologies (Conole, 2008b).

Benefits of the Learning Design approach: range of tools, methods and approaches to help teachers think differently, making the design process more explicit, means of sharing good practice.

A new understanding of design

What we can see across these three areas of research are different types of design

1.      Pedagogical patterns – describe a learning and teaching activity or strategy according to a predefined template – what’s the problem? Here’s a tried and tested solution.

2.      OERs – might be considered as ‘designs in action’ – with content.

3.      Learning design – better understanding of the broad ways in which learning and teaching activities or strategies can be represented from narrative case studies or descriptions through to visual designs.

Can we start to put these together?

·        Can we combine these learning design tools with the documented good practice, which has been developed in the pedagogical pattern community, with the real exemplars available in the OER world?

·        This is the focus of a new Hewlett funded project – Olnet which aims to create a global to help researchers and users of OER to work together – so that research outputs inform practice and vice versa.

·        We are interested in exploring how explicit designs might be used to help learners and teachers. How existing designs – available through sites like Cloudworks, via OER repositories such as Openlearn or via Pattern communities like Planet – might feed into an evolving network connected researchers and users of OERs.

An illustrative example

The following scenario provides an example of how this might work. (Figure 1).

 

Teacher A: The design phase

Context: A teacher is putting her beginners’ level Spanish material for the OU course L194 online in the Openlearn repository. She uses the CompendiumLD tool to articulate different ways in which she thinks the materials can be used. In particular she is interested in showing how the materials can be used as both a revision exercise for an individual student and at a more advanced level for a group of students working collaboratively. Whilst developing her design in CompendiumLD she has access to ideas and tips and hints from the Cloudworks site, as well as from a range of OER and Pedagogical Pattern repositories. These help her to refine her design thinking, to get ideas about how to structure activities in the sequences and suggestions of tools that be used for example for supporting a diagnostic e-assessment test or to enable students to communicate synchronously.

Learner A: Use Scenario 1 – beginners’ route

Context: A Learner doing Spanish.  She is a few weeks into the intermediate level Spanish course. The topic she is currently working on is ‘describing places’, she is looking for freely available tools or resources that might help her, she is also interested in finding study buddies to work with, who are at a similar level.

1.      Explores the openlearn site

2.      Finds a set of OERs for a beginners’ Spanish course – L194 – Portales from the Open University, UK.

3.      Finds alongside these resources a visual design – which provides an example of how these resources might be used. The design consists of the following aspects:

a.       A diagnostic e-assessment test to assess her level of understanding of the topics covered in the course

b.       Two potential pathways: a) a beginners route where the learner works individually through the L194 OER material, b) an advanced route where the learner is assigned to a study group to work collaboratively around 1 aspects of the L194 OER material, Activity 2.1. In this advanced route, the existing activity (categorise 3 pictures of buildings as Latin American or Spanish) is replaced with one where the learner has to describe and compare the buildings, working collaboratively with other students and interrogating an expert for information. The activity exploits the jigsaw pedagogical pattern and also uses a free video conferencing tool to enable the study group to speak with a Spanish cultural expert. 

4.      She takes the diagnostic tests and the advice is that she takes the beginners’ route and completes the L194 OER material.

Learner B: Use Scenario 2 – advanced route

Context: Same context as above, but in this case after taking the diagnostic test the advice is that he takes the advanced route and focuses in on the adapted activity 2.1 as a collaborative exercise with other students.

Teacher BL Use Scenario 3 – repurposes

Context: an associated lecturer teaching on the intermediate level Spanish course at the Open University, En Rumbo – L140, preparing for a face-to-face tutorial with his students. The topic is describing places. Finds the design described above and adapts it to produce two new variants of the design 1. a classroom-based activity where the students describe the pictures using the Think-Pair-Share pattern and provides, 2. A similar exercise in terms of comparing three buildings but the students are asked to describe buildings from their town and then talk with an expert (a student in Spain) who then describes their home town. The activity is set as a precursor to the first assignment exercise for the course.

Figure 2 provides a conceptual overview and generalisation of this scenario – showing how an initial design can query existing resources such as Cloudworks and Openlearn, use these to help create and populate an OER, along with an associated design, both of which can then be deposited back into sites such as Cloudworks and OpenLearn for reuse.

 

Conclusion

The mismatch between the potential of technologies and actual use in practice is I would argue one of the most important key challenges facing e-learning researchers today. The areas of Pedagogical Patterns, Learning Design and OER research have developed a range of valuable tools and resources which have proved effective in supporting teachers and learners and enabling them to decide and use educational resources more effectively. The next stage in the challenge is how to build on this; how to make more effective connections across these three areas of research.

Acknowledgements

Many people are involved in this work but want to thank in particular:

§   Olnet/Openlearn: Patrick McAndrew, Yannis Demitriadis (who is currently working with us as a visiting Olnet professor), Tina Wilson, Niall Sclater

§   OULDI: Andrew Brasher, Juliette Culver, Simon Cross, Paul Clark, Martin Weller

§   Funders: The William and Flora Hewlett foundation, the JISC, the Open University for strategic funding

Websites

·        The Open University Learning Design (OULDI), http://ouldi.open.ac.uk

·        Cloudworks, http://cloudworks.ac.uk

·        CompendiumLD, http://compendiumld.open.ac.uk

·        Olnet, http://olnet.org

·        Personal blog, www.e4innovation.com

·        Slideshare, http://www.slideshare.net/grainne

References

Ala-Mutka, K., Bacigalupo, M., Kluzer, S., Pascu, C., Punie, Y. and Redecker, C. (2009). Review of Learning 2.0 Practices. IPTS technical report prepared for publication, IPTS: Seville, available online at http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=2139 [18/4/09].

Atkins, D., Seely Brown, J. and Hammond, A.L. (2007), A review of the Open Educational Resource movement: achievements, challenges and new opportunities, report to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, available online at http://www.hewlett.org/NR/rdonlyres/5D2E3386-3974-4314-8F67-5C2F22EC4F9B/0/AReviewoftheOpenEducationalResourcesOERMovement_BlogLink.pdf, last accessed 5/2/09.

Conole and Culver (submitted), Cloudworks: applying social networking practice for the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs, special issue of CAL09, Computers and Education, submitted April 09.

Conole, Brasher et al (submitted), CompendiumLD paper, adaptation of paper presented at Edmedia 08, submitted April 09.

Conole, G. (2008a) ‘Capturing practice: the role of mediating artefacts in learning design’, in Handbook of Research on Learning Design and Learning Objects: Issues, Applications and Technologies, in L. Lockyer, S. Bennett, S. Agostinho, and B Harper (Eds), 187-207, Hersey PA: IGI Global.

Conole, G. (2008b), New schema for mapping pedagogies and technologies, http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue56/conole/

Conole, G. (in press), Stepping over the edge: the implications of new technologies for education in M. Lee and C. McLouglin (forthcoming), Web 2.0-based e-learning: applying social informatics for tertiary teaching, ICI Global: Hersey, PA

Conole, G. and McAndrew, P. (submitted), A new approach to supporting the design and use of OER: Harnessing the power of web 2.0, M. Edner and M. Schiefner (eds), Looking toward the future of technology enhanced education: ubiquitous learning and the digital nature.

Conole, G., Brasher, A., Cross, S., Weller, M., Clark, P. and White, J. (2008), Visualising learning design to foster and support good practice and creativity, Educational Media International, Volume 54, Issue 3, 177-194.

Conole, G., Culver, J., Well, M., Williams, P., Cross, S., Clark, P. and Brasher, A. (2008), Cloudworks: social networking for learning design, Ascilite Conference, 30^th Nov – 3^rd Dec 2008, Melbourne.

Conole, G., De Laat, M., Dillon, T. and Darby, J. (2008), ‘Disruptive technologies’, ‘pedagogical innovation’: What’s new? Findings from an in-depth study of students’ use and perception of technology’, Computers and Education, Volume 50, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 511-524.

McAndrew, P. and A. I. Santos (Eds.) (2009). Learning from OpenLearn: Research Report 2006-2008. Milton Keynes, UK: The Open University.

NSF (2008), Fostering learning in the networked world: learning opportunity and challenge. A 21^st Century agenda for the National Science Foundation, report of the NSF task force on cyberlearning, available online at http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf08204, last accessed 8/2/09.

 

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[1] http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Connectivism

I’ve just been at a very productive two-day meeting at Strathclyde University. It was related to our JISC Curriculum Design project (see our main OULDI site and associated links). The twelve projects involved in the programme have been grouped into clusters of related projects. We are part of Cluster C, along with Strathclyde and Ulster University. We have a shared interest in a number of respects: a focus on the pedagogical aspects of curriculum design, exploration of different types of representations and development of schema for thinking through the design process.

Each cluster has a ‘critical friend’ ours is Peter Bullen from Hertfordshire University.The aim of the meeting was to share what we have done to date in the projects and in particular to draw out a set of activities that it might be useful to do at the cluster level. We began by providing an overview of our projects, work to date and issues we had identified. One of the activities we are currently all engaged with is mapping our existing curriculum design processes and developing a baseline document of curriculum design which we can use as a benchmark of progress achieved on the projects.

A key issue for all of us is how to represent curriculum design – what representations might be useful, for what purposes and for whom? We spent a lot of the first afternoon sharing what we had done to date and some of the problems in terms of what representations might be appropriate. We agreed that representation at the level of learning activity was now fairly well understood. In our own work we have articulated a learning activity taxonomy, which describes the components that need to be addressed when designing at this level (such as the tools and resources involved in the activity, the kinds of task the students will do, the roles of those involved, etc.). Whilst some of these components scale up to the level of curriculum design, this level brings additional levels of complexity – how can you map across the design process, what are the relationships between the different components at this level and what are the interdependencies?The general conversation got me thinking and with jet lag kicking in I was wide awake early the next morning so took the opportunity to try and articulate my thoughts and issues with this through a series of Powerpoint slides, which are available from slideshare. I used the Powerpoint presentation as a starting point for the conversation on day two and then adapted the slides on the basis of our shared discussion.It seemed to me we needed first and foremost to agree a set of types of representations and then test these out in our different contexts. I put forward eight initial representations but during the discussion an addition two emerged – around mapping relationships/interdependencies and around mapping the flow process of design. Below is a description of each of these representations.

Textual summary and keywords

This representation provides a brief textual overview of the course (akin probably to what is already produced in course descriptions). In addition we would include keywords, which give an indication of the nature of the course. For us keywords might include a description of the type of course it is (in terms of mapping to some abstract model). At the OU we have identified six models: ‘OU classic’, bought-in, Web 2.0, wrap around, empty box, and disaggregated curriculum assets. In addition we would include a set of keywords that described the course generally, in terms of discipline, level and pedagogy (problem-based, dialogic, etc.).

At a glance map

This representation would list out all the components of the course. It would be possible to drill down into each component to find out more details about it – for example what tools are being used, when and for what purpose?

Timeline 

The timeline would distinguish between activities during the production phase of a course and those during the actual presentation/delivery of the course. In addition, a simplified student timeline (akin to what we in the OU in terms of the course calendar), giving a breakdown week by week of what the student has to do, along with key milestones such as assignment deadlines would be useful.For us for example each course starts with a Business Appraisal (BA), then there are eight ‘stage gates’ (SG1 – SG8) over the production and presentation of the course. Other key moments include drafts of material (from D0 a rough outline of content and activities through to D2 a final draft).

In terms of the student view – courses are divided into blocks with each block consisting of a number of weeks; key deadlines include TMAs (Tutor Marked Assignments) and ECA(End of Course Assignment).

Content/topic/curriculum map

One way of representing content is showed below – where the content is organised by a series of themes and sub-themes.

Workload – overall, distribution, breakdown

The workload representation would need to identify the stakeholders involved in the course and an allocation of their time involvement/costing across the production/presentation of the course. This could be presented as a simple aggregate of time/costs or broken down into appropriate timeframes (weeks or months).

Principles/pedagogy matrix

This representation articulates the pedagogical approach being adopted by the course and the overarching principles. The example we provide uses a schema we have developed previously, more details are available in a recent Ariadne article. It provides a matrix which maps the principles of the course against four macro-level aspects of pedagogy. Principles might be generated/articulated by the course team (for example getting the students to reflect on experience and show understanding or incorporating frequent interactive exercises and feedback across the course) or might be derived from theory or empirical evidence (for example the 12 REAP assessment principles).

Furthermore we can then produce a set of ‘Course Design DNAs’, which can be used to compare the nature of different courses. Below is an example of two comparative DNAs. One for OpenLearn which is a repository of open educational resources and one for SocilaLearn which is an initiative applying web 2.0 tools and principles to an educational context.Variants on the matrix are also possible. For example mapping principles to course activities, or mapping the principles to a different set of pedagogical characteristics (for example Bloom’s educational taxonomy, the REAP principles or Laurillard’s conversational framework).

Cost

As with the timeline representation, cost would be broken down into production vs. presentation/delivery costs. As with the workload costs could be viewed across different timeframes.The people cost would be an aggregation of the workload representation discussed earlier, but in addition cost types include resources, media, assessment and administration.

Success criteria tick box

This representation tries to articulate what constitutes a ‘good course’, what does good mean? At the OU we have identified four broad criteria for good; good in terms of: pedagogy, innovation, cost effectiveness and fitness for purpose/context. For each of these it is then possible to list a set of sub-criteria or demonstrations/evidence of how the course is ‘good’ in terms of the four macro-criteria.

Relationships and inter-dependencies

We didn’t really get onto articulating what this might look like but essentially this representation would show relationships and inter-dependencies at the course level. This might include a mapping of learning outcomes, topics and assessment for example, or a representation of media use across the course. Diana Laurillard’s London Pedagogic Planner has attempted to do some aspects of this, as did the Media Advisor tool we developed a few years ago.

Process flow maps

Finally UML-type representations can be used to show the process of curriculum design – who is involved and when and an indication of data flow across the system.

In discussion around these representations, we clarified a number of aspects. Firstly, that clearly the representations could work at a number of levels of detail and for each it would be important to work at a level that was meaningful. In many of the representations, there are a number of ‘white boxes’ that are represented at a general level but could, if needed, be unpacked in more detail. This is particularly evident with representation two – ‘course at a glance’.

As with the learning activity level there is a differentiation between Curriculum designs as static representations vs. progression process vs. relationships/dependencies; indeed as representation nine begins to indicate this is even more an issue at the Curriculum level than at the activity level. We also discussed as a group the distinction between representations of the design of a course and particular instantiations of the course.We also considered the ways in which such representations might be used and how they might add value.

Six initial examples were suggested:

• Guidelines for course design
• Comparison between courses
• Articulation of particular departmental, faculty, or institutional overviews
• Deconstruction
• Checklist
• Course evaluation

As a to do list to take this work forward we suggested the following:

• Set up a cloudscape for the cluster and populate with clouds describing the different interventions each of the projects is producing (tools, approaches, methods)
• Work up/validate curriculum design taxonomy
• Agree a set of principles mapped to good pedagogy (REAP, etc)
• Brainstorm success criteria
• Trial representations and compare.

I found it really useful to have the time to discuss in-depth some of the challenges each of us are facing in terms of mapping and representing at the curriculum level. I would really welcome feedback on these representations, are they useful? are there others we should be including? Below is a picture of us dining out at the City Merchant where the heated debates from day one continued!

We have been making substantial changes to Cloudworks recently and there is more to come! Juliette Culver is on a roll! We have just commissioned a graphics designer so the site is to get a totally new look and feel very soon! Below are some draft guidelines on the site and tips and hints on using it. Would welcome comments.

An introduction to Cloudworks

·           What is it? Cloudworks is a social networking site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas and designs.

·           Core concepts. There are two key concepts associated with Cloudworks - the notion of ‘Clouds’ and ‘Cloudscapes’.

·           Clouds. A Cloud can be anything to do with learning and teaching. Each Cloud is ‘social’ in that it is possible to have a conversation around the Cloud. A Cloud could be: a short description of a learning and teaching idea, information about resources or tools for learning and teaching, detailed learning designs or case studies of practice or a question as a starting point for a discussion.

·           Cloudscapes. Clouds can be aggregated into ‘Cloudscapes’ associated with a particular event, purpose or interest. For example you can have Cloudscapes associated with a conference aggregating Clouds about conference presentations or tools and resources referenced. A Cloudscape can be set up for a workshop where Clouds might include workshop resources, tools or activities. Cloudscapes can also be more general for example to stimulate debate about a particular teaching approach.  Clouds can be associated with more than one Cloudscape.

·           Creating a user account. You can view everything available on the site, but if you want to create Clouds or Cloudscapes or if you want to add comments, then you need to create an account.

·           Navigating the site. The front page shows a rolling list of new Clouds added to the site on the right hand side, features Cloudscapes are presented in the middle panel and a list of Clouds that have recently had comments added to them appear on the left hand side. You can get a list of all the Clouds in the site by clicking on ‘All Clouds’. A title and brief summary for each Cloud is provided. Click on the link to get further details. Clicking on the ‘All Cloudscapes’ link lists all the Cloudscapes in the site, as with individual Clouds a brief description of each Cloudscape is provided. Clicking on a particular Cloudscape will take you into it and will show all the Clouds associated with that Cloudscape.

·           Setting up a profile. You can set up a profile and include some information about yourself. Your profile page automatically lists any Clouds you have created. You can follow both people and Cloudscapes. Your profile page indicates the Cloudscapes you are following, who you are following and who is following you.

·           Creating a Cloud. To create a Cloud clicks on the ‘create a Cloud’ link. Enter a short title and a summary - these will appear on the ‘All Clouds’ page and give an indication of what your Cloud is about. Then enter a description - you can include url links, images, etc. You can also provide a URL for more information. You can tag the Cloud in terms of ‘tool’, ‘pedagogy’, ‘discipline’ and ‘other’. Clicking on the tag list at the top will list Clouds according to how they have been tagged using these categories. You can preview to see what your Cloud will look like and then submit. A Cloudscape is produced in much the same way. Once your Cloud has been created you can add it to one or more Cloudscapes. You can also go back and edit the Cloud or delete it. Other people registered on Cloudworks are able to add comments to any Clouds or Cloudscapes you produce.

·           Finding content. Clouds and Cloudscapes can be tagged by pedagogy, discipline, tool and other and can be searched using these tags or via a search facility. You can also find relevant content by browsing All Clouds, All Cloudscapes or looking at the Clouds associated with individuals under their profile.

·           Your Cloudstream. All the Clouds created by the people and Cloudscapes you are following are aggregated under your ‘My Cloudstream’.

Tips and hints for effective use of Cloudworks  

1. Supporting conferences

·           Set up a Cloudscape for a conference.

·           Include a short clear description of the conference in the Cloudscape with a link to the conference website.

·           Agree and promote a hash (#) tag to be used for the conference, which can be used for Twitter, Blogs, Flckr etc.

·           Incorporate a dynamic twitter stream, blog aggregator, flckr stream using the agreed conference tag.

·           Promote the conference Cloudscape to delegates, via Twitter etc and invite them to follow the Cloudscape.

·           Live blog sessions and include as Clouds in the conference Cloudscape, keep entries short with succinct summarising, provide links to further information

·           Comment on relate Clouds in the Cloudscape that others have created.

2.     Supporting workshops

·           Cloudscapes can also be used to support workshops and all the tips and hints suggested for supporting conferences are also valid for supporting workshops.

·           Set up discussion Clouds that can be used as a basis for group activities during the workshop. Include a brief outline of the activity you want delegates to take part in and any associated questions you want them to address. Get them working in groups and entering their discussions as comments on the discussion Cloud. Encourage them to scan what other groups are entering.

·           Live blog workshop sessions such as plenary discussions and feedback sessions.

3.     Aggregating resources

·           Set up a Cloudscape to support a special interest group and input Clouds of relevant resources. For example Cloudscapes can be set up for particular cohorts of students, enabling them to share good learning resources, and discuss learning strategies.

4.     Sharing innovative learning and teaching ideas

·           Create Clouds on good learning and teaching ideas you have created or that you have seen or experienced. Keep your Clouds short and succinct; include relevant links to further information. Consider depositing further information in an Open Educational Resource repository such as Connections. Tag appropriately in terms of subject, pedagogy and tools.

·           Set up a Cloudscape to aggregate related innovative Clouds – for example those relating to mobile learning, problem-based learning, learning a language.

·           Enrich Clouds using the html functionality available in the editor. Hyperlink to relevant information.  Include illustrative images. Embed slideshare presentations, YouTube videos or Flckr images. Aggregate related tweets or blogs.

·           Search the site by browsing the tag Cloud, ‘All Clouds’ list, ‘All Cloudscapes’ list or via individual profiles or search using key words.

5.     Connect with others

·           Complete your profile details – include a summary of your interests and link to relevant websites. Provide details of your twitter name will enable any tweets with your twitter name on to be aggregated under your profile and will provide a means for other users of Cloudworks to contact you via twitter.

·           Follow Cloudscapes and people you are interested in, these will be listed on your profile and give others an idea of your interests.

·           Get creating Clouds! These will also be listed on your profile.

·           Engage in a conversation, comment on other people’s entries and Clouds.

·           Find others by name or institution.

6.     Keep abreast of new developments

·           Set up RSS feeds for Cloudscapes or people you are interested in keeping up to date with.

·           Browse the front page to get an idea of new Clouds and any new discussions around Clouds.

I have been working on a couple of papers on our cloudworks site. They are here and here - any comments welcome!

As I blogged about before we have drastically changed the structure of cloudworks and in particular introduced the notion of ‘cloudscapes’, which are aggregates of clouds associated with a particular event or community. One of the potential uses we saw for this was as a means of providing a space for capturing and discussing activities at conferences. Both Juliette Culver and I have now had a chance to try this out for real.

Here is the Ascilite cloudscape. I was really surprised how useful it was using this as a mechanism for live blogging. It seemed to form a compliment to more detailed, reflective blog posts (such as the one I did on the Ascilite keynotes) and one-line tweets. Also having the ability to have others commenting on the clouds and/or adding clouds was really useful.

It was interesting to see how the Dial-e cloud I put in was then picked up by Simon Atkinson and add also to the Dial-e framework cloudscape he has now created - very much Weinberger’s ‘Everything is miscellaneous’ in practice!

I’ve spent Thursday at Edith Cowan University with Ron Oliver (pro vice chancellor for learning and teaching) and Joe Luca (dean of the graduate research school). It’s a beautiful campus about half an hour train ride from the centre of Perth. I was struck, as I often am, by how similar Ron and my lines of research interests are. Ron talked me through some of the work he has been doing as part of his Carrick fellowship. He has created an online database of good practice in learning and teaching. This includes a range of innovations. Each has concise details, which essentially represent the inherent learning design of the idea. Ron described it as analogous to buying a house. You begin with some broad metrics – location, price, type of property, number of rooms, etc and only then begin to drill down to specifics such as the house details and then through a process of further narrowing down, only then do you choose to go and actually see some properties.

His feeling was that we need to adopt a similar approach when looking at learning and teaching ideas, by guiding users through a set of broad, generic factors, before guiding them into detailed designs. Each design in his database has a set of fields and short descriptions - including title, learning outcomes, nature of the activities and assessment undertaken by the students, what resources and tools they will be using, etc. The database was developed in conjunction with learning technologists and educational developers across Australia. Ron ran a series of workshops to foster debate on the issues with creating such a database and used these workshops to develop a shared consensus of how to design and structure the database. Experts were asked to contribute good practice examples and research journals were trawled to find innovative case studies to include. One of the interest facets, Ron explained, was the difficulty of getting shared consensus on what constitutes ‘good design’, even amongst experts and even when they were using shared criteria. What I think this highlights is the difficult of rarefying designs and the reality that at the end of the day design is only as good as the context within which it occurs.

There seemed to be a lot of synergy with this work and what we are doing with cloudworks. I showed Ron and Jo the site and explained what we are trying to achieve. It would be really interesting to explore how cloudworks might be used in conjunction with Ron’s site and whether a site like cloudworks might provide a forum for shared debate.

One interesting question Ron asked me was what would I consider to be the KPIs (Knowledge Performance Indicators) for the site – well he is a pro vc after all! ;-0) and it’s certainly an interesting question that we have been asking ourselves in the team. At a trivial level I think the answer is simple, i.e. evidence that the site is being used by people and that they find it useful! But actually when you unpack this, it’s a lot more complicated than that – how are people using the site, is there enough new content being automatically added to the site rather than ‘seeded’ by us, how much engagement and discussion is there around the clouds (the core social objects of the site), is there any evidence that use of the site is making a difference to what teachers do and how they design courses? Some of these can be retrieved relatively easily through web stats etc. Others, such as impact on practice, are subtler and will require us to do more in-depth case studies and evaluations.

Adopting an evidence-based approach is a key feature of our overall approach within the OU Learning Design Initiative and certainly evaluation of events such as the cloudfests we ran around the first version of cloudworks were really valuable and helped shape our thinking in terms of the development of this current version of the site. One comment at a cloudworks summit we ran in September from George Roberts really struck a cord with both Juliette Culver (the technical developer for cloudworks) and myself. George said we should be using the site ourselves, an obvious statement, but it did get us thinking ‘What would make us use the site, where is the added benefit?’ I have to admit I found that difficult to answer with the first version of the site, but I can really see a use for the notion of cloudscapes that we now have. I’m looking forward to getting feedback and comments on the site at the forthcoming Ascilite conference and catching up with people.

I’m at the start of a mammoth three-week trip of Oz – Perth, Melbourne and then Sydney. I spend the day yesterday with Martin Dougiamas (head of Moodle). It was a pure luxury to spend the day brainstorming with him and great to see ‘Moodle head quarters’ and the core team. Was surprised to see a familiar face - Tim Hunt from the OU - who is out here on secondment for a year. Martin is a partner in our JISC Curriculum Design project, which is partly about exploring how we might adapt and deploy the tools and resources we have been developing in our Open University Learning Design Initiative (OULDI) in different contexts. There are essentially three layers – embedding the use of the tools and resources across the OU, cascading them out into four other UK institutional contexts (Brunel, Cambridge, London South Bank and Reading universities) and then across two pan-community contexts (i.e. the Moodle and Lams community). I bought Martin up to speed with the various components of OULDI – CompendiumLD, Cloudworks, the different schema we have been thinking about in terms of reconceptualising design (see this ariadne article for more on what I mean by this) and the types of events we have been running to get community engagement and user feedback (such as our Cloudfests and Design Challenge events).Martin was very interested in our latest developments of CompendiumLD and could really see the power of being able to represent designs visually. Of course it would be wonderful to be able to more closely integrate CompendiumLD and moodle, so that with one click the design could be converted into a course on the fly, but this would be far from trivial! One of the recent features Andrew Brasher has been working on is enabling users to add time allocations to tasks in activities, which are then automatically aggregated from each role (student, tutor, etc.). He is also working on being able to map learning outcomes at different levels of design. I showed Martin our new version of cloudworks (will blog a more detailed post about the specifics of this later), where the focus is on encouraging dialogue and discussion around different community needs. Martin gave some great feedback on the site and it was interesting to what him navigate around – albeit a bit nerve wrecking too!! We talked about usability and design issues with site development and of course issues about security and anti-spamming. Quality control also came up – in terms of the balance between open access and contribution and avoidance of site dilution in terms of good content. Martin showed me around the Moodle community (virtually). It really is very impressive seeing the open source community up front and in action – the shared mechanism for reporting bugs, voting, discussing and tracking developments via tracker.moodle.org (a repository with ca. 17,000 issues and bugs). He talked about the sensitivity of identifying and promoting ‘experts’ or ‘trusted others in the system. They currently have a simple but effective approach with a voting on objects in the system, which just says ‘Was this useful?’ yes/no. Responses are aggregated according to an open algorithm and people within the system then have little icons associated with their name to denote their ‘expertise’. He also shown me around the moodle discussion forums and the ways in which they are using tagging to group people with common interests together. One mechanism for example was to view users who are tagged in the system with similar terms – Moodle and Guinness seemed to be particularly popular – not sure what the significance of that is!Clearly the Moodle community is vibrant and worldwide– which is why it seemed such an obvious and valuable community to work with; a collective bound in a common interest – i.e. the use of Moodle to develop courses. What struck me was that crudely speaking you could categorise the community engagement and dialogue into three layers:

1. Technical discussions – i.e. the layer most closely aligned to the open source notion. This layer is about a shared, collective enterprise of identifying, discussing and tracking issues and bug fixing. This layer is particularly well developed and Moodle has a sophisticated online system and volunteer facilitators to ensure this is effective.
2. Support issues – the next layer up is primarily around users sharing tips and hints, seeking support and advice on how to use Moodle. This is primarily through a range of treaded discussion forums at moodle.org
3. Pedagogical issues – the third layer is about sharing ideas about good practice in course design. What struck me was that this was the least developed layer and this is where I think there is a real connection with the work we are doing and why I am so excited about being able to work with Martin as part of our JISC project.

The Cloudworks site we have been developed is precisely about providing a mechanism for encouraging and facilitating discussion at this third layer, i.e. helping users to find, share and discuss learning and teaching ideas and designs. However we know that this is far from trivial. Rarefying ideas and designs into different representations, whether those are textual descriptions/case studies or visual designs, loses something of the essence of the design in the process. Although teachers say they want case studies and indicate that they are interested in sharing designs and discussing ideas with others, in actual practice this rarely happens in practice (note the third pedagogical issues layer I referred to above). And yet extending the vibrant open source community engagement to more generic learning and teaching issues has been a long term goal of many of us working in this area.

We then let brainstorming get the better of us (think this was because it was after a delicious lunch in a local café…) and started to think ‘what if…’ Wouldn’t it be nice if when a moodle user started a new course there was a set of resources and tools they could draw on to help guide them in creating a great course? Could we take and adapt some of the tools from our OULDI work as a starting point for this? Could Cloudworks act as a conduit for sharing the designs and ideas generated within the moodle community? In other works can we focus on promoting that third layer – and get vibrant community engagement around the pedagogical aspects of developing moodle courses? So Martin and I decided to have a go at doing this. We plan to develop a moodle course, which will be initially seeded with the various tools and resources we have been developing, as well as others we think might be useful. We are going to put out an invite to the moodle community to participate in the course. The goal will be to use the tools and resources to design ‘great’ courses. Participants will be encouraged to share their experiences of using the tools and resources and to discuss each other’s ideas and designs. Courses created will have be made available on the moodle demo site. We think we will target educational developers/instructional designers/learning technologists – i.e. those tasked with providing support and advice on course creation within institutions. Although we will initially seed the course, we will continue to develop it based on participants’ feedback and reflection on their experience of using the tools and resources. Participants will have a shared goal in terms of adapting the core course to develop their own institutional version of ‘Create a great course’.

This may of course turn out to be a mad capped idea but we reckon it’s worth a try and if nothing else I am sure it will generated lots of interesting discussion and we will learn a lot in the process. It was a privilege to be able to spend time with Martin and I am really looking forward to taking these ideas forward with him and to more fruitful discussions in the future.