Teachers and Learning Design
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There are a vast number of documents and applications available on the web which can be used in teaching, both free of charge and for sale. Metadata (information about the documents) can be stored about the document, often consisting of a list of keywords hidden in the code of the document itself. If metadata has been included (and this is a big "if") then it becomes much easier to find useful documents. What metadata does not do, however, is give a teacher or parent any idea of what learning activities might be possible with the resources that have been found. This is where IMS Learning Design has a key role to play.
Using Learning Design a description can be created in XML which defines a Unit of Learning in terms of how people take up roles in order to carry out activities with resources. In this way it is possible to model the learning activities in a classroom or other educational context (but note that there is no aspiration to model the pedagogic principals which inform them, or the learning processes of the learners). Our work with Learning Design (and its predecessors) shows that it can specify a educational activities which draw on a very wide range of pedagogic approaches, ranging from, for example, discussion groups with no content materials, to structured read and test approaches with no personal contact. Learning Design is the only open eLearning specification available which has this range of pedagogic expressivity and ability to work with groups of learners.
The resources referred to in the Units of Learning may be online resources, but can also be any other kind of document or object, and the Unit of Learning provides a pedagogic setting for the learning materials. Using this approach the same materials can be used in many different contexts (for example a reproduction of an old painting could be used to discuss history or aesthetics), and the same pedagogic approach can be used for different materials (for example an activity where learners divide into groups, discuss and report back to the full class can be used with all sorts of different materials).
Of course, teachers do not need Learning Design in order to carry out innovative activities with electronic learning resources, such as SCORM objects. What Learning Design adds is a notation for representing these activities and sharing them outside the teacher's immediate circle of practice. At the risk of oversimplifying, from the perspective of the teacher or educational institution Learning Design can be seen as an interoperable and standardised way of representing lesson plans, which enables learning activities to be defined to a high level of detail and shared between teachers and learners. In Learning Design these plans are called “Units of Learning” (UoLs). They can be of any length, often much longer than a single lesson, but can be divided up into smaller sub units.
Because the Unit of Learning is described in an explicit and standard way, it can be processed by a special application on a computer (known as a player ), which can coordinate the UoL, making resources activities and services available to the right people at the appropriate time, keeping track of participants work, and controlling the flow of the learning activities. The same Unit of Learning could also be printed as a lesson plan, with a guide for the teacher and resources.
When the specification was first approved only programmers could make UoLs. Now tools are available which mean that anyone who is enthusiastic about working with computers can spend some time to get to know the specification and create Units of Learning, but this is still too demanding for most teachers, who have little time available. In the Teachers and Learning Providers CoP we have extensively discussed the ways in which teachers can participate in the development of UoLs, and the implications this has for systems developers and learning designers. This has contributed to the substantial progress has been made in the development of templates and interfaces which make it easier for teachers to identify pedagogic scenarios, and to adapt Units of Learning. The ease of use of applications and pedagogic support for teachers is gradually improving, and we are confident that this trend will continue in the future. The ultimate goal is to enable users to focus purely on learning and teaching, perhaps being completely unaware that they are using Learning Design and other specifications.
It is only when appropriate tools are in place, and UoLs are available, that Learning Design can fulfil its purpose, and be used by teachers with learners. As UNFOLD draws to a close this is now starting to happen, and the results have been shared through the CoP. As this becomes more widespread in the coming months and years the activities supported by the CoP will become increasingly relevant.
