Elizabeth Masterman

Teachers’ perspectives on digital tools for pedagogic planning and design

The authors introduce the concept of design support tools and situate them in the pedagogic context of professional development for technology-enhanced learning (TEL) and the research field of learning design. Through focusing on the development and evaluation of one such tool, Phoebe, they discuss their value to lecturers in post-compulsory education as tools for planning and designing TEL. Their approach combined the agenda of learning design with requirements elicited from potential users. Findings suggest that design support tools that give priority to pedagogy over technology have a role both in everyday practice and in professional development programmes. Intrinsic motivation and a sense of ownership are key factors in their uptake; nevertheless, institutional support is crucial to success. Challenges to effective use include establishing meaningful representations of learning design, and supporting both guided and flexible paths through the design process. The authors conclude by outlining a successor project: the Learning Design Support Environment.

Capturing Teachers' Experience of Learning Design through Case Studies.

This article distinguishes three dimensions to learning design: a technological infrastructure, a conceptual framework for practice that focuses on the creation of structured sequences of learning activities, and a way to represent and share practice through the use of mediating artefacts. Focusing initially on the second of these dimensions, the article reports the key findings from an exploratory study, eLIDA CAMEL. This project examined a hitherto under‐researched aspect of learning design: what teachers who are new to the domain perceive to be its value as a framework for practice in the design of both flexible and classroom‐based learning. Data collection comprised 13 case studies constructed from participants’ self‐reports. These suggest that providing students with a structured sequence of learning activities was the major value to teachers. The article additionally discusses the potential of such case studies to function as mediating artefacts for practitioners who are considering experimenting with learning design.

Computational support for teachers’ design thinking: its feasibility and acceptability to practitioners and institutions

A significant area of learning design research has been the development of software applications that guide teachers’ thinking as they plan, construct and revise learning events for their students. In this paper, we review conceptualisations of, and approaches to, the activity of pedagogic design and highlight the implications for the provision of computational support for this activity. We then outline different ways in which that support has been implemented in three digital tools: Phoebe, the LAMS Activity Planner and the Learning Designer. We consider the challenges to, and implications of, deploying these tools from the perspectives of three groups of stakeholders: developers, teachers and institutions. Our findings suggest that, while such tools are acceptable in principle, they face a number of technological and socio-cultural challenges to their acceptability from teachers’ perspectives and to their deployment within institutional strategies for teaching and learning in a digital age.

Towards a Principled Approach to Evaluating Learning Design Tools

This chapter turns the spotlight from the design and development of digital tools that support the practice of learning design (‘learning design tools’) to their evaluation, a phase in the design-development cycle that has arguably received less treatment in the learning design research literature than it merits.