PhD Researchers and Learning Design
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The IMS Learning Design specification reflects a change in emphasis away from using the computer to display educational content and towards using the computer to facilitate the teaching-learning processes. This change has been welcomed by educational technology researchers, who have also identified this as a priority in recent years. At present there is little doubt that IMS LD has provided challenging topics of research. IMS LD leads, for example, to unexplored problems in distributed systems, and in user interface design when applied to supporting coordinated flows of learning activities.
Since the release of IMS LD in February 2003 numerous interesting research lines have emerged, which have led to projects on a variety of scales, PhD thesis, etc. In some cases IMS LD is the focus of research, while others use the specification as an “instrument” to support or validate their proposals. These research lines combine a broad range of different keywords that might include but are not limited to: instructional design, educational modeling languages, pedagogical expressiveness, blended learning, collaborative learning, standards, interoperability, reusability, adaptation, ontologies, taxonomies, patterns, templates, authoring tools, runtime engines, players, repositories, learning management systems, service-oriented computing, etc.
Moreover, not only does IMS LD present research challenges in many domains, but also itself relies on approaches and contributions from many disciplines. While the two main perspectives for successful implementation and use of IMS LD may be information and communication technologies and pedagogy, there are other disciplines such us sociology, psychology, artificial intelligence or human computer interaction that may also contribute to IMS LD. The relationship between IMS LD and these domains of study is a mutually beneficial one.
Research contributions to IMS LD range from development of tools to proposals regarding further improvement of the specification. These contributions, some of which represent the first implementations of IMS LD in practice, reveal the possibilitities and limitations of IMS LD. Perhaps even more importantly they provide multiple opportunities (conferences, workshops, project meetings, journals) for discussion, reflection and dissemination of the potential of IMS LD in changing the use of educational technology. These research driven activities have proved to be a key factor in making progress towards the adoption and extensive use of IMS LD in real practice.
