The document discusses the Learning Designer tool and an international learning designs challenge held in 2014. It provides details on the challenge, which involved participants creating, sharing, and reviewing learning designs using the Learning Designer tool over the course of a week. Over 100 learning designs were created and reviewed, and participants provided positive feedback on the value of collaboratively designing lessons, receiving peer feedback, and learning about different approaches to teaching. The challenge helped improve the Learning Designer tool and supported the goal of building an online community around designing learning experiences.

1. The Learning Designer
and the International Learning Designs
Challenge
Eileen Kennedy

2. Learning Designer Tools
Learning Designer CRAM

3. Design Based Research Cycles

4. What conditions are required
for active learning to take place?
Learning
experience
needs to be
designed
Three cycles of
communicatio
n between the
teacher and
the learners
must be
engaged
(Laurillard,
2012)
Teacher
communication
cycle
Teacher practice
and modelling
cycle
Peer
communication
cycle

5. Teacher and peer
communication cycles
1. The teacher must communicate their
concepts for the learner to
understand;
2. The teacher must provide an
environment to model the learning and
for the learner to practice within;
3. The learners must engage in peer
communication, providing their own
modelling and practice environments
to support each other’s learning.

6. Learning Designer
An online tool to
support lesson
planning
Focuses on the
experience of
the learner
Specifies
teaching and
learning
activities by
learning type
Learning types:
Read/Watch/Listen
Discuss
Investigation
Practice
Produce
Collaborate
Dynamic pie chart
shows proportion of
learning type in
overall learning time
designed

7. Time
OutcomesOutcomes
Feedback
from pie
chart
Learning time, group size,
teacher presence

8. Browse, adapt, curate your designs

10. Export to MS Word

11. Export to VLE using IMSCC

12. International Learning Designs Challenge:
Creating, sharing and reviewing learning designs
10-14th
February 2014: Blackboard Coursesites

13. International Learning Designs Challenge:
Creating, sharing and reviewing learning designs
10-14th
February 2014: Blackboard Coursesites;
LearningDesignerCommunity YouTube Channel

14. WordPress Blog:
Building Community Knowledge
learningdesigner.org

15. What makes a good design?
Peer review criteria for learning designs
1 Test? Is there a
‘produce’ activity, or
some way the teacher
can use to test whether
outcomes are met?
2 Aligned? Are
outcomes, activities,
and produce activity
aligned?
3 Feedback? Is there
feedback from the
teacher, other
students, or the
technology?
4 Technology? Does the
technology support the
learning type(s)? Does
the design support
critical digital literacy?
5 Other? Are there
individual criteria that
are specific to this
design?

16. Building community for impact and
development
• Blackboard Coursesites: 346
enrolments
• + Wordpress blog visitors
• Silver badge – watch video
tutorials
• Gold badge – watch videos,
post challenge, create learning
design, review learning design,
reflect on learning design
review
• 53 Silver badges
• 26 Gold badges awarded
• Reached target of 100 designs
• 49 substantive reviews
• 123 discussion posts
• 84 Blog entries

17. Visitors to the LD tool
during the LD Challenge
statcounter.com

18. Visitors to the LD tool

19. The Value of The Challenge
A valuable experience
•Just putting yourself into the
perspective of some else gives you new
insights.
•Getting over organisational blindness by
critique of peers.
•Getting to know other approaches in
teaching and learning.
•Looking at the teaching preparation
(design) of other people is a little bit like
a look into their head (blogger5).
Value of live video
I was pleasantly surprised to discover
that there are live synchronous Google
Hangouts on air in YouTube (blogger16).
Development of the tool
It would be good … if the designer was
happy to have a conversation with the
reviewer and that was indicated
somewhere, a conversation could take
place elsewhere.
N.B. Just saw the information for
Thursday and that there is already a
'message box' so my last sentence has
already been achieved (blogger13).
Desire for community and
communication
It would be nice if could see what others
are doing (blogger20).

20. A participant’s perspective:
Elizabeth Charles
Motivation
Having completed
Open Course in
Technology Enhanced
Learning in 2013 and
produced a lesson plan for
an information literacy
session – I wanted to flip
this session
The duration was one
week and I could fit that
into my work schedule it
wouldn’t feel like a long
drawn out commitment.
Gave me an
opportunity to use the
Learning Designer tool
with a live (real) lesson
plan rather than it being
just a theoretical exercise.

21. Affirm good pedagogy
Would help with
ensuring that the
underlying pedagogy was
sound and would make it
very apparent re the pie-
chart element of Learning
Designer based on
Bloom’s Taxonomy which
of the different elements
of learning theory my
lesson plan relied on
This also gave me the
opportunity to experiment
with changing this to see
what impact it had in how
I delivered the session and
what users would be
expected to do and learn
during the lesson

22. Elizabeth’s Experience of the
Challenge
I found it interesting and well structured, and the
platform used was a new one to me – CourseSites
Daily webinars provided context and discussion on
the Learning Designer tool itself
I enjoyed being able to have a look at the other
submitted lesson plans and reviewed one such
using the evaluation rubric.
A very informative exercise that gave me new
perspective on how I could possibly amend my
lesson plans

23. Also gave me the opportunity to provide feedback
and share my expertise by suggesting other options or
changes to the lesson plan I was reviewing and the use of
other more relevant technology that might be employed
in the class.
The course was undertaken I felt in a very supportive
environment and participants were encouraged to be
constructive in the feedback being given
I enjoyed the first challenge so much – I participated
in the second challenge that took place a couple of
months later!

24. Conclusions
Mini-MOOCs work for design based research
projects
Create engagement
Build community
Involve users in design process
Enable testing & evaluation at scale
Create resources to sustain engagement