OpenOffice/Calc 3/Learning Design

Clarification of aims
Working with Spreadsheets in OpenOffice.org Calc is a tutorial to help learners who are new to using spreadsheets learn and practice the foundation skills. Users with some haphazard and/or rote experience using spreadsheets will also benefit.

Ensuring learners drive your design
Who are the learners/users/target audience?

Adolescents and adults who are new to using spreadsheets or have only haphazard and/or rote previous experience

What are the particular needs of this group?

Users will need concise and easy to understand instruction and relevant, interesting practice activities. Users will want to know whether or not they performed the task successfully.

How are their needs going to be catered for in the design of your resource?

The tutorial will use clear, concise language, include interesting practice activities and will provide "solutions" for activities by user-request for comparison to their own work.

''What is the situation in which most learners will use this resource? For example will they have access to computers, the internet, or will they need printed versions of materials?''

All users will have access to a computer, although not necessarily to the internet. Some users may find it helpful to print the tutorial for use/study off-line.

Useful links

Learning activity
''What are the overall learning goals/objectives for this resource or course? What changes do we want learners to show as a result of using the resource?''

Upon completion of this module a learner will be able to...


 * Develop, format, modify and use a spreadsheet
 * Generate and apply standard formulae
 * Create and format graphs/charts

What types of learning activities are learners going to need to DO to achieve the learning goals?

Learners will need to engage with OpenOffice.org Calc as specified in the activities: formatting, creating formulae, creating charts.

''How are we going to check that learners have achieved what they set out to? ''

Not sure that we can know, but if the learner is working with an instructor, the instructor could review the activity results.

What feedback will learners need to receive to know how they are going?

Activity solutions.

How are learners going to communicate with each other and ‘teachers’ while they work through the resource?

Not sure, tutorial is designed for independent work.

Useful links

Learning resources
What relevant resources and tools already exist that learners can use?


 * Tutorials for OpenOffice. Calc (Spreadsheet) Tutorials -- tutorials based on OO 2.3. Organized for user to follow along. Static design.


 * in pictures. OpenOffice.org Calc In Pictures -- very concise language. Organized for user to follow along. Static design. Includes advertising.


 * LearnOpenOffice.org. Calc Spreadsheet Tutorials -- basics are written only for 1.1x. Includes advertisements.


 * OpenOfficeSchool.org. Lessons for Calc - wonderfully clear screenshots. Interesting language, but a bit wordy. Screenshots shown for Windows operating system

What, if any, new resources need to be created?


 * Includes independent activities with on-request "solutions"
 * Displays OOo Calc 3 running in Ubuntu
 * No advertisements
 * Includes practice activities with available solutions

How should these resources be used?

Independent study, although there may be situations where it becomes part of a blended learning experience.

What opportunities can we build in to encourage learners to discover and share their own resources?

Not sure.

What support will learners need?

Maybe there's an OOo forum where users who were having trouble could get real-time help.

Useful links

Teaching and learning approach
What philosophies or approaches underpin what we want to achieve?

Structured to emphasize doing, with reading-about used to provide initial instruction. Will include lots of visuals to reinforce actions as the material progresses.

Useful links

Using the materials
How do we recommend this resource be used?

The learner works through the pages of the tutorial using an internet browser, performing the indicated tasks in OpenOffice.org Calc as the content progresses.

Useful links

Evaluating the materials
What feedback would you like about the resource you have created?

The best feedback would be from users who are using the materials to learn how to operate OpenOffice Calc and from a number of different kinds of users (different with respect to age, gender, culture, geography).

How are you going to get this and when?

I envision a survey form where users provide ratings in response to questions, as well as some open ended responses. Is there a way on WE to create a form that could feed into a table, like on google docs spreadsheet?

Questions provided by Template:LDBlueprint.

See also Prototype Design Guide tool