What do teachers want from Learning Design James

What do teachers want from Learning Design? James Dalziel Professor of Learning Technology & Director, Macquarie University E-learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE) james@melcoe. mq. edu. au www. melcoe. mq. edu. au Director, LAMS Foundation; Director, LAMS International Pty Ltd www. lamsfoundation. org ; www. lamsinternational. com Presentation for UNFOLD Conference, Glasgow, 12 th October, 2005

Overview • Background to LAMS • LAMS Development Principles • Evaluations and Feedback • LAMS Community Principles • Questions and Discussion

What is LAMS? • LAMS is a unified learning design system, including: – Visual “drag and drop” authoring environment – Monitoring environment for tracking individuals and classes – “Run-time” learner environment, incorporating a suite of activity tools (forum, chat, etc) – Administration environment for user/organisational management – SSO integration with LMSs (Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai, etc) • LAMS is open source software (GNU GPL) • LAMS has been under development for 3. 5 years, in live classroom beta trials for 2 years, and released as an OSS production version for 6 months

Is LAMS a Learning Design system? • LAMS is based on the concept of “learning design”, defined as “people doing activities using resources/environments” • LAMS is “inspired” by the IMS Learning Design specification, but is not a reference implementation • LAMS provides an XML import/export format (“LAMS LD”) that can be (partially) mapped to IMS LD – See Oxford TIP report • In LAMS V 1. 1 (next major release), it will support IMS LD Level A (with and without extensions) as well as “LAMS LD” XML • Problems with IMS LD contributed to Valkenburg group

Example of Creating Learning Designs using LAMS Authoring

Example of Learner Environment for LAMS Learning Design

Evolution of LAMS Principles • Phase 1: “Guess” what teachers might want – 2001 -2003 • Phase 2: Show teachers a system, gather feedback – 2003 -2004 • Phase 3 a: Create a community for LAMS development – 2005 onwards • Phase 3 b: Create a community for sharing re-usable resources – Wider set of principles for encouraging sharing • NB: “Teacher” covers all educators/trainers, but schools/universities have been primary target to date • NB: “What do teachers want from LD? ” is based on my experiences from LAMS, but much can be generalised

LAMS Development Principles • LAMS was not simply an R&D project, it was always planned to create production software for “real” use in schools, universities, etc – Including both synchronous (eg, computer lab) and asynchronous (distance learning) contexts • Initial major focus was on activity tools development – Rather than expecting these to be external to an LD system • Innovation was seen as crucial – LD was a new area • Collaborative activity tools were relatively more important than complex single-learner sequencing • Authoring (and adaptation) should be easy and rapid – A few minutes to a few hours

LAMS Development Principles • The target audience for LAMS users was the typical teachers/lecturer, not specialist instructional designers, or XML-fluent researchers, or central production units – Visual authoring environment – No XML of any kind – Simple, forms-based activity configuration – Constrain the huge variety of possibilities imagined in IMS LD to a manageable set based on partially-configured activity tools • LAMS “sequences” (or learning designs) should be easily shared and adapted – Group areas within a LAMS server – Import and export option – share via LAMS Community, email

Evaluations & Feedback • LAMS evaluations to date: – Kemnal Technology College (initial trials) – BETT slides 04 – Oxford University (on behalf of JISC trial with 16 universities and 15 TAFEs) – JISC report – BECTA evaluation of UK school trial (40 schools) – Interim report – NSW DET evaluation of 5 schools (report not yet released) • Some themes: – Increased student motivation/engagement & enjoyment – Teachers found it prompted reflection on their teaching – Workload sometimes increased, sometimes decreased (may depend on lifecycle of use – more to start, then less later? ) – Sharing is starting to happen, but there is much to learn about how to best support and encourage it

Evaluations & Feedback • Some examples of teacher requests and response: – “Preview” important for authoring (eg, JISC trial) • Implemented Jan 05, positive response – Survey tool for capturing learner responses (JISC trial) • Implemented Jan 05, positive response – Integrate richer text and web content into activities • RTF editor for noticeboard in Apr 05, HTML noticeboard Oct 05 • RTF editor for all tools in V 1. 1 – Integrate with LMSs • SSO: Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai, Web. CT, . LRN, etc – see www. lamsfoundation. org/integration/ • Tools integration: ? (possible in V 1. 1 using tool interface) – Portfolio export • HTML/Text record of individual student activities for V 1. 1 • HTML/Text record of all class activities for teachers for V 1. 1

Evaluations & Feedback • Some examples of teacher requests and response: – Languages other than English • Internationalisation of LAMS for V 1. 1 – Branching/Grouping • More advanced grouping in V 1. 1, more branching V 1. 2 – Edit sequences on the fly • Can see where in Monitor – Sequence tab – planned for V 1. 2 – Wizard • “Author Xpress” prototype example – Instant Messaging • Allow teacher to learners, and L 2 L messaging in V 1. 1 – Offline text editing once sequence structure in place • Yet to explore – could use custom Open. Document format?

Some Development challenges • Integrated platform or distributed web services? – “Quality of service” problem • What is the role of the LMS? – What does LD to LMS integration mean? • What is needed for a Learning Design “tools interface/contract/API”? • What to do with problems or gaps in IMS LD? • How to balance innovation with interoperability? – Especially for a new technology area like LD • Balancing complexity and simplicity – Features for “innovators” vs the simple needs of “early majority”? • How to handle multi-learner sequencing, branching, etc?

Some Development challenges • Single biggest challenge? …Funding for core development

LAMS Community Principles • 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

LAMS Community Principles • 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: – Learning Designs/Learning Activities focus, rather than simply content – Community focus, rather than repository focus – Search based on free-text searching, not metadata searching – Automated usage tracking/rating systems, not complex peer review/approval systems (and nothing on usage) – Small set of simple licenses, not complex licenses (and nothing) – Learning software and learning content are free - no payment required – Resources can be easily adapted by others, not just fixed/static – Close integration of Learning Platform and the Community for sharing – Easy to share own work – short submission process, automated MD

LAMS Community Principles • LAMS Community based on the suggested principles – Launch next week – to complement 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

LAMS Community Principles • Initial community structure: – Educational Community • • Getting Started K-12 Schools Higher Education Research and Development – Technical Community – LAMS Lounge • Will add new communities as need grows – Can be closed or open • Technical community will become the home of the LAMS open source development community • Join at www. lamscommunity. org

LAMS Community example – Community view (K-12)

LAMS Community example – Sequence Repository

LAMS Community challenges • Any flaws in the LAMS Community assumptions, or…. the assumptions are right, but: • Teachers don’t want to share – But only some need to share (most OSS users are not code contributors) – what is needed to foster enough sharing? • Teachers don’t have time – But some find time regardless – how many, though, are needed to create a viable community, and will this require funding to create critical mass? • Failure to strike the right balance between pre-built sequences and templates – This may vary between sectors (schools vs universities) • Other reasons?

Questions and Discussion • Principles for LAMS development • Evaluation and Feedback • Principles for LAMS Community • Challenges