Presentation made to the JISC Summer Digital conference June 2009 (Burden & Atkinson) and to the Estonian e-Universities Conference held in Tartu, Estonia in April 2009 (Atkinson)
1. June 2009
Reusable Learning Designs:
DiAL-e Framework
Digital Artifacts for Learning Engagement
Simon Atkinson
s.p.atkinson@massey.ac.nz
Massey University, New Zealand
11. 9: Representational
Engagement:
Students in need of the ability to articulate the historical
changes in language are asked to contrast an order of
procession from 1880 with one from 2000 and identify
changes in social classifications
12. 7: Empathy
Engagement:
Students needing to appreciate the contextual and
culturally specific nature of knowledge are asked to
study arguments put forward in an emotive resource
and develop a first voice response in favour, and
against, the principle argument
13. 10. Figurative
Engagement:
Biology Students search visual resources for examples
of ‘swarm’ behaviour amongst humans as a precursor
to an activity that looks at the mathematical basis for
studying swarms.
22. For more information please feel free to contact either:
Simon Atkinson - (s.p.atkinson@massey.ac.nz)
or
Kevin Burden - (k.j.burden@hull.ac.uk)
Further Information
Notes de l'éditeur
Contact Details
Simon Atkinson
...................
Strategic e-Learning Advisor
College of Education
Hokowhitu Campus
Massey University
Palmerston North
New Zealand
email: s.p.atkinson@massey.ac.nz
tel: +64 6 356 9099 ext 8871
Kevin Burden CPD Coordinator Post-graduate professional development Manager Institute for Learning
Wilberforce West
The University of Hull email: k.j.burden@hull.ac.uk
Tel:+44 1482 46 6731
There are still huge challenges for educational institutions in making use of digital resources. How to store them, manage them and retrieve them is only one dimension of the reusability issue.
Hardware
Ease of access, Licensing and hardware - Are your materials available to the people you need them to be available to.
Software
Managing materials on staff and student desktops, accessing it and sharing it. All possible of course but often perceived as ‘too difficult’. Should you develop new ‘tools’ or seek to use existing ones to maximise engagement?
Wet-Ware (the human factor)
Skills of teaching staff to add real value - Do staff understand the resource and how they could deploy it. Is it enough to just ask the library to ‘make it available’ ?
Flexibility of resources - can the artefacts be manipulated easily and meaningfully. Are they available in formats which allow them to be edited, represented, re-contextualised?
Development of community of users - is there a viable community of practitioners that can support the process and that can support each other?
Copyright and Intellectual Property remains a serious obstacle for institutions.
Materials available under different headings:
‘Materials Production’ in Education
‘Developing Open and Distance Learning Materials’
‘Learning Objects’
Reusability, Reversioning
‘Learning Resources’
Littlejohn, Alison (2003) Reusing online resources: a sustainable approach to e-learning, London, Kogan Page
Learning Designs with a focus on user engagement:
Active Learning - ‘Discovery Learning’
Important that learners are ‘cognitively active’. Not just behaviourally active.
It is not enough just to make the resources available and point the learner at them, the learner needs to be supported to be actively engaged with the resource, challenged, provoked, supported and encouraged.
Should There Be a Three-Strikes Rule Against Pure Discovery Learning?Mayer, Richard E. American Psychologist. Vol 59(1), Jan 2004, pp. 14-19
The DiAL-e Framework aims to provide opportunities to assess resources for their potential value for learning engagement.
The Learning designs are intended to support staff, and self-directed learners, regardless of learning mode, to engage through artefacts.
Concentrating on : Learning Opportunities
A Question of Engagement
We intend that the Framework be used to support the individual to question “How do I use the artefact(s) to engage learners in a process of….?” and NOT “What does this archive contain?”
An example of the ‘Question of Engagement’
NOT: I’m teaching my second years about European integration, what’s the archive got on Jean Monnet?
BUT: I want my students to understand how contentious, how ‘revolutionary’ post war integration appeared to different Europeans between 1945-1950. What can I have them do with digital resources which would engage them in that process.
The original Learning Design matrix remains a practical paper based tool for conceptualizing resource and space.
The paper document has two axis – one relating to spaces
Large
Seminar
Mobile (portable)
Virtual
Workshop/Lab
And 10 meta-categories of learning designs.
These are described in terms of the activity and ‘engagement’ the learner has in approaching the resource.
Our emphasis is engaging the learner with digital resources in order to understand or explain conceptually challenging ideas or constructs more effectively.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Consider how you currently begin your teaching encounters.
How do you get everyone on the same page?
What motivation do your learners have to be there at the start of the session?
How do you create anticipation?
The Matrix was ‘populated’ with reference originally to a specific resource. The NewsFilm Online archive.
We sat down as a team, Kevin Burden, Simon Atkinson and Theo Keuchel to identify a resource which would illustrate a particular learning design.
Our focus was NOT on the subject content of the resource but on that resources ability to offer the affordances of the learning designs we had begun to develop.
We went through a process of defining the design, describing it in terms of learning context and activity to be undertaken by the student and then sought an illustrative example from the archive.
The resulting work for the NewsFilm Online Assisted Take-up materials produced an interactive online matrix providing examples of the use of these learning designs.
Visit the JISC Digitisation website via http://www.jisc.ac.uk
The DiAL-e Framework is a means of structuring activity. We intend it to be a tool for the development of earning activities and a tool for learners to understand the processes through which they engage in the learning process.
The ten learning designs in the Framework are:
Stimulation
Narrative
Collaboration
Conceptualisation
Enquiry
Authoring
Empathising
Research
Representational
Figurative Analysis
Stimulation
Activities to stimulate interest and student engagement
Starter-Plenary
Topping & Tailing
Dissonance & Shock
Observational ‘Watch Closely’
Narrative
Sequencing materials to convey a narrative or story
Collaboration
Interacting and collaborating with peers to facilitate the construction of knowledge and understanding
Conceptualisation
Optimizing opportunities for students to develop ‘deeper’ understanding of concepts and procedures
Hypothesis Testing (POE)
Synthesis
Mind maps & Diagrams
Analysis
Extrapolation
Enquiry
Using resources to solve ‘real world’ (authentic) problems or issues presented to them
Authoring
Authoring artefacts – ‘learning by doing’. Student authored video edits.
Empathising
‘Walking in the shoes of others’: decision making and role-play activities using archive material.
Research
Encouraging the learner to search and research materials using the search facilities/engine and the archive as a source of data
Representational
Exploring the archives from the perspective of composition and aesthetics (mis en scene, montage, design, intonation)
Figurative
Exploring the alternative meanings and representations possible with a given resource, its use as allegory, analogy and metaphor
These ten designs are grouped together as those primarily concerned with ‘engagement’, ‘knowledge construction’ and ‘reflection’
This is an example of the ‘representational’ learning design where we want student to explore the medium as the message. This is well rehearsed in film studies and related disciplines. However, all students can learn important critical thinking skills by exploring the way text is presented on a page, the ways type is used to convey a theme, a tone or an idea. An audio archive might contain interesting content but it also can tell us something about the nature of language and the assumptions of those being recorded.
For exemplars visit the DiAL-e website at:
http://www.dial-e.net
This example of Empathy explores a print based archive of medical material. However, a broad range of social studies students might benefit from engaging with the social issues around euthanasia or suicide for example.
Being asked to ‘update’ a resource is a useful way of engaging students in the process of developing research skills whilst enforcing the need to verify data and be assured that it remains relevant to the argument being advanced.
For exemplars visit the DiAL-e website at:
http://www.dial-e.net
In this example we are using a resource (a film archive newsreel clip of a fascist rally in Italy in the1920s) to illustrate the patterns and techniques for analysing swarm behaviour.
Preventing students from rushing to the internet to find subject based examples of swarm behaviour in animals or fish allows the teacher to ensure the fundamental concepts are more accurately understood.
For exemplars visit the DiAL-e website at:
http://www.dial-e.net
There are a number of well established ‘learning object’ repositories (MERLOT / JORUM) and a number of community sharing environments for learning designs (Cloudworks.ac.uk). There are also a large number of media rich resources now available through publicly accessible archives and repositories (see JISC digitisation programme).
Where we believe there is still a gap to support practitioners is in the deconstruction and pedagogical guidance of existing learning objects where the underlying pedagogical premise is not articulated, and the described pattern of learner activity represented as a learning design but which again fails to articulate the intent of its designer.
We began the DiAL-e project by articulating 10 designs for ‘things the learner would DO’ with a digital resource.
Having described these ‘activities’ in terms of what the individual would be asked to do in making use of a digital resource we remain concerned by academics inclination to place their emphasis on the ‘content’ of the digital material rather than its pedagogical deployment.
We are now seeking to codify the DiAL-e designs in a number of ‘learning design’ tools to optimise the use being made of the various repositories and to encourage the articulation of successful practice.
One of the most ubiquitous ‘educational technologies’ in use in our Universities is ‘PowerPoint’ or other slideware.
We have therefore opted to begin the process of codifying and enabling the DiAL-e learning designs using PowerPoint.
Each PowerPoint presentation is both template and exemplar.
Users will be able to download an annotated example which contains pedagogical guidance notes.
They can substitute any part of the object with new resources and new guidance.
These newly created objects can then be shared as new reusable objects.
Users are encouraged to annotated the pedagogical notes for future users to explore their own successful practice.
Another very simple and widely used piece of Software on the Microsoft Windows platform is MovieMaker. The models we are developing apply directly to iMovie also.
The DiAL-e learning design process is illustrated here. In addition the 10 meta-designs in the framework are being illustrated as MovieMaker Projects in the same way. These will be downloadable from the www.dial-e.net website and fully editable.
A slightly more complex authoring environment is that of the eXe XHTML authoring tool.
This produces a range of XHTML pages, creating the navigation automatically, and a range of export options including as IMS/SCORM packages for deployment within a variety of VLEs.
A template structure has been created in eXe.
In addition iDevices, distinct HTML elements, that can be selected whilst authoring have been designed to reflect the DiAL-e learning design process.
Further development work is being explored with the LAMS tool.
The Open University UK learning design project using the tool Compendium LD will also be explored.
The DiAL-e framework has prompted work in a number of areas. Currently we are
Exploring the potential of the Framework to incorporate widest possible definition of ‘digital artefacts’
Exploring opportunities for integration of Framework within ‘Pedagogical Planners’ such as CompendiumLD, LAMS, iDevices(eXe)
Extending opportunities to work academic colleagues in an academic development context
Workshops & Presentations made on request
Project Wiki:
http://www.dial-e.net
(links to http://dial-e.wetpaint.com)
Screencasts and Project Videos:
http://dial-e.blip.tv
For more information please feel free to contact either Simon Atkinson (s.p.atkinson@massey.ac.nz) or Kevin Burden (k.j.burden@hull.ac.uk)