Sharing Learning Designs Building the LAMS Community website

Sharing Learning Designs: Building the LAMS Community website James Dalziel Professor of Learning Technology & Director, Macquarie E-learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE) Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia james@melcoe. mq. edu. au www. melcoe. mq. edu. au Presentation for EDUCAUSE, Orlando, Florida, 19 th October, 2005

The Problem: E-learning Content Today • Most assumes single learner, self-paced learning • Often little more than textbooks online? • Content-centric, transmission model of education – What is the implied pedagogy?

ICT ? Information and Communication Technologies

Introducing Learning Design • Learning Design is a name given to a new field of e-learning technology • Learning Design = Sequence of Collaborative Learning Activities • Learning Designs can incorporate single learner content, but also collaborative tasks such as discussion, voting, small group debate, etc • Potential to “wrap” a single-learner Learning Objects with a sequence of collaborative tasks • **Learning Designs can be stored, re-used, customised

Demonstration Example: LAMS • LAMS illustrates the Learning Design approach • In trials for over two years in Australia and UK – Strong positive response from both teachers and learners • Applicable to all education sectors (schools, VET, HE, corporate training, adult and community learning, etc) – Eg, UK K-12 & HE trials; Oxford, Cambridge, ANU, New Zealand Ministry of Education/National Library, etc • LAMS released as freely available open source software by the LAMS Foundation, commercial support services provided by LAMS International Pty Ltd – Both supported by Macquarie University – See www. lamsfoundation. org and www. lamsinternational. com

LAMS Live Demonstration (For a screenshot walkthrough of a demonstration similar to the one shown live, see the “What is Greatness? ” example on slides 9 -20 at http: //lamsfoundation. org/CD/html/resources/summaries/LAMS. Launch. Workshop. ppt ) Case Study: LAMS UK School Implementation - JISC Video http: //www. jisc. ac. uk/uploaded_documents/kemnal. wmv

Example of Creating Learning Designs using LAMS Authoring

Example of Learner Environment for LAMS Learning Design

The Dream of Re-using E-learning Content • Many of us have believed in a dream, either implicitly or explicitly, that goes something like this: – “if each educator built a few excellent e-learning resources, and shared them with everyone else so that all could use and adapt them, then the re-use of shared resources would revolutionise education through higher quality and faster preparation” • That is, if we remove duplication in development and planning, but retain the ability to adapt to local context, we could transform the working lives of educators – Instead of everyone duplicating everything, and mostly doing a mediocre job, each educator focusses on a few areas of speciality (shared with all), then re-uses the work of others • How is the dream going? – Despite $100 Ms and enormous effort – I believe it has failed

New Principles for Re-use and Sharing • Why has it failed? Many reasons – not enough time now • Is the dream still worth believing in? – I think so • Suggested new principles for fostering re-use and sharing: 1. Learning Designs/Learning Activities focus, rather than simply content 2. Community focus, rather than repository focus 3. Search based on free-text searching, not metadata searching 4. Automated usage tracking/rating systems, not complex peer review/approval systems (and nothing on usage) 5. Small set of simple licenses, not complex licenses (and nothing) 6. Learning software and learning content are free - no payment required 7. Resources can be easily adapted by others, not just fixed/static 8. Close integration of Learning Platform and the Community for sharing 9. Easy to share own work – short submission process, automated MD

Introducing the LAMS Community • LAMS Community based on the suggested principles – Complements LAMS V 1. 0. 2 release • Built on the Open. ACS /. LRN open source community platform – Personalised portal view across different communities • Key Community Features – News (including RSS) – Discussion forums – **Sequence repository (including RSS) – Sub-communities – Surveys – FAQs

Introducing the LAMS Community • Initial community structure: – Educational Community • • Getting Started K-12 Schools Higher Education & Training Research and Development – Technical Community – LAMS Lounge • Will add new communities as need grows – Communities can be open or closed • Technical community will become the home of the LAMS software open source development community

LAMS Community for sharing and developing LAMS Learning Designs - Login

Teacher Home Page – Personalised Portal View of all Communities

Teacher Home Page – Personalised Portal View of all Communities (cont)

Single Community View

Forum View

Sequence Repository – Public View

Example of Search page including results

Individual Sequence – Detailed View

Individual Sequence – Download page

Overview of Sequences you have shared

The Birth of Open Source Teaching? • The LAMS Community recommends Creative Commons “open content” licensing for LAMS sequences – Default license: attribution, non commercial use, share alike • Is this the birth of “Open Source Teaching”? – Combination of open source software that captures the teaching process and community sharing under open content licensing – Bringing the concepts of shared “code” to educational practice via re-usable sequences of learning activities • As with any open source project or community, its success depends entirely on its contributors – We welcome you to join us at www. lamscommunity. org