expectations, interests, preferences and learning
styles. In this sense, learning design arises as a new
focus of interest embracing all actors of education
field.
Learning design can be introduced as follows: "it
aims at providing teachers with a framework capable
to bridge the gap between rich, descriptive models
and technologies, and the everyday practice and
understanding of teachers" (Cameron, 2009). It has
the potential to go beyond the learning content
creation itself and proceed to the "process" of
education. In other words, learning design helps to
bring to the stage the learning issue while the
technological aspects come after. In turn, the
contributions of the new technologies to the learning
design also need to be underlined once usual
teaching-learning methods and pedagogies that were
previously taken for granted can now be
reconsidered (Beetham, 2007).
Another definition of learning design is
presented in (Koper, 2005): "as the application of
learning design knowledge when developing a
concrete unit of learning (UoL), e.g. a course, a
lesson, a curriculum, a learning event". The meaning
of learning design knowledge is transmitted by a
series of prescriptive rules with the following
format: "if situation, then method". The left-hand
side of the rule is the learning situation which
accommodates the situational factors. The main
objectives of these factors are twofold - firstly, they
may represent the requirements that any new
learning design method has to meet – secondly, they
can be seen as descriptors of the situation in which
an existing learning design method has been applied.
The term situational factors are justified by the
assumption that one method may behave best in a
particular situation whereas another method may
work best in a different one. Learning outcomes and
learning conditions are the two subclasses of
situational factors. The former is related to the level
of effectiveness, efficiency, attractiveness and
accessibility of the learning design method. The
latter is related to the characteristics of some
elements, such as the learning objective (knowledge,
skill, attitude, competence), the learners (pre-
knowledge, motivation, situational circumstances),
the setting (individual and/or group work, work at
school and/or work and/or home) and the media
(bandwidth, synchronous/asynchronous, linear/
interactive, media types) (Koper, 2005).
Following the IMS Learning Design
specification, a learning design basically describes a
teaching-learning process. This process has several
components, namely metadata, roles, plays, acts,
environment, role-parts, sequence of activities and
conditions. This conception may be compared to a
script of a film or a theatrical play.
It is worth stressing that the term learning design
is used to describe a learning experience supported
by tasks to which students should be engaged to. For
example, students may be formed into groups and
required to discuss the relations between two given
topics; or they may be asked to gather some
information about a theme and then write a report.
2.1 Learning Design Repositories
The use of learning technologies and specifications
should be considered for that wide contextualisation
of the resources. The IMS LD specification can be
used to sustain this approach and state how to use a
Learning Object.
In fact, several learning design repositories have
appeared, based (or not) on the IMS LD
specification. For instance, there is a Learning
Design Repository available at http://www.idld.org,
which encloses a number of learning scenarios.
The European Network for Lifelong Competence
Development (TENCompetence) was a four-year
project supported by the European Commission
through the IST Programme running from December
2005 to November 2009. It used IMS LD in the
context of Life Long Competency Development. It
developed systems using the specification, in the
context of one of its work packages that focussed
specifically on Learning Activities.
Another remarkable project from the pre-IMS
LD era was the Learning Designs Project (Australian
Universities Teaching Committee, 2003), which
generated “generic/reusable learning design
resources”.
The LAMS (Learning Activity Management
System) community of practice maintains a
repository of learning scenarios in LAMS sequence
format (.las files).
Considering all those initiatives, it is expected
that Learning Design Repositories will become
increasingly popular, as the possibility to search on
learning design properties, for example, is a very
interesting functionality to provide to end users.
2.2 Learning Design Templates
To design an effective learning process it is
necessary not only to consider the learning
resources, but also the activities and interactions that
will support the knowledge transfer, and the whole
learning situation. Accordingly, the resources should
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