Learning Design Review: Concept, Specifications and Tools
The principle aim of this report is to review and evaluate currently available software tools related to learning design. Whilst the IMS Learning Design Specification (IMS-LD), which we will consider in some detail here, provides a very thorough framework for evaluating the capabilities of software tools within the learning design space, it is also possible to argue that it presents only one of many possible realisations of the concept of learning design and that there are other possible ways to model the concept of learning design that do not implement IMS-LD.
Consequently, it has been suggested (Dalziel, in press) that it is useful to make the following distinctions between:
- Learning design as a broad concept
- The instantiation of the concept in the IMS-LD specification
- The realisation of both in software tools to support the process of creating and managing learning designs.
Despite its relatively recent appearance in connection with e-learning, this concept of ‘designing for learning’ is far from being a new idea. In a traditional face-to-face context, many teachers may consciously and reflectively engage in the process of learning design in this general sense as part of everyday lesson planning, whilst other teachers or lecturers may never have given it much thought, but nonetheless make subconscious learning design decisions every time they prepare a teaching session.
Yet, whilst they are hardly groundbreaking new ideas in education, the central ideas behind learning design represent new possibilities for increasing the quality and variety of teaching and learning within an e-learning context:
- The first general idea behind learning design is that people learn better when actively involved in doing something (i.e. are engaged in a learning activity)
- The second idea is that learning activities may be sequenced or otherwise structured carefully and deliberately in a learning workflow to promote more effective learning
- The third idea is that it would be useful to be able to record ‘learning designs’ for sharing and re-use in the future