Learning Design

About Learning Design
Learning design is about building environments that enable learners to learn. It focuses on the activity learners need to undertake in order to meet learning goals. Resources and supports are then carefully chosen and matched to enable learners to achieve their learning goals.

Much learning design is done intuitively but designs are strengthened when pedagogies and teaching approaches are consciously chosen to support the achievement of learning goals. Learning design draws on a variety of pedagogies and teaching and learning approaches.

Useful Resources
Useful examples of activity or task oriented design and tools:


 * Project on ICT-based Learning Designs

Learning theories outlined:


 * Theory Into Practice (TIP) database
 * The Funderstanding site is another that outlines learning theories.


 * The Theory and Practice of Online Learning (2nd ed.) - open textbook - blends scholarship and research; practical attention to the details of teaching and learning

Constructivist theories of learning:


 * Situating Constructionism by Seymour Papert and Idit Harel, the first chapter from the book Constructionism (1991), provides some of the original thinking on the topic.
 * The Design of Constructivist Learning Environments, by David Jonassen, in Instructional-design Theories and Models: A new paradigm of instructional theory by Charles M. Reigeluth, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1999), Chapter 10, p. 215-239, offers a good synopsis of the theory and useful examples.
 * Reading list from The Nature of Constructionist Learning course offered through MIT OpenCourseWare.

Many of the resources developed in WikiEducator will be used in learning environments where access to new technology is difficult or impossible. However, for some it will be appropriate to consider designing for learning that does utilise new technologies and can particularly focus on the development of web2 environments. That is, a focus on using technologies to network and build collaborative opportunities with learners having far more input into the design of their own learning spaces.

New technologies and learning design:


 * Wiki Pedagogy challenges traditional design practice:

Resources for newcomers to learning design:


 * Support network for learning designers


 * A learning design activity in a simple text-based game format

WikiEducator Tools
We are developing a set of tools to help with the learning design of projects in WikiEducator.


 * Prototype Design Guide tool
 * Learning Design Templates

Page Nodes

 * Project planning and development