One of my Masters degree courses required a group project as part of a block about the Learning Design Studio. Our project developed a Google Site for our work. This is a copy of my contributions to the group effort, reformatted for this website. The project starts here.
Reflection
What I’m glad I learned: I’ve used quite a few different learning design frameworks in the past, but had never even heard of Yishay Mor’s Learning Design approach. What I liked about it was that it borrows ideas from software development processes. Since I usually work within software development teams, this would give me a common language to discuss various learning design activities, and would even help me explain how some of what the developers do (personas, for example) can be immediately transferred to my work as well (personas for learning the software, to use the same example).
What I wish I learned more: I wish I’d seen more of the atelier approach that is part of Mor’s framework. This was absent within my project group, but it also never really took off within the tutor group nor across the cohort.
What I’m most proud of: I think Grant and I did a good job communicating and working together to create quality work in a timely fashion. I also think we were good at what is called “working with integrity” — doing what we say we will do and communicating our levels of ability and availability.
What I would pass along to the H817 design team: One of the patterns I identified in our project was named the ‘Learners First’ pattern. The gist of it is, no matter how fantastic something is (a theory, a learning activity, a technology, and so on), the ultimate goal should not be forgotten — the learner should learn. Students will have varying motivations, goals, desired levels of achievement, cultural scripts, and abilities. Given that, how would this block have looked if students were given a choice to either do the problem-based learning activity or to read a set of Mor’s articles plus associated activities such as are in the other blocks? I think some would choose the reading and writing as more efficient for their needs, and having such an option would also allow students a way to continue learning if the problem-based activity fell through.