vendredi 14 mars 2014

#olds mooc Higher Education Learning Design

(prototype in text form)

keywords: educational design, learner activities, academic workplan, post-pedagogical design, learning paradigm, skills, knowledge, learner representation

Educational Design—General (or context)

Educational design may be envisaged from at least four viewpoints:
  1. Although the process involves no measuring activity and is subject to no measurement standard, educational design is an acclivity of instructional engineering and many adhere to the concept as it relates to e-learning theory, empirical data and “the substrate of explicit and implicit rules and assumptions which bind the discourse of a scientific community.” (Mor 2010:5,8) 
  2. In the sense of traditional pedagogy. Where the teacher or instructor (performing their assigned tasks) are implicitly considered as the mainspring of both (i) the education system and (ii) the teaching-learning process.
  3. In the didactic framework, that is, until recently, the framework of traditional classroom teaching within controlling organisational and administrative boundaries (prescribed resources, subject matter, values). 
  4. From the viewpoint of a learner workplan as characterised in open and distant higher education where learners may to some extent, in certain courses, determine the content or references in the proposed academic workplan. This feature stands out as a trait in the design of this type of course if the professor so intends. Where this reasoning is somewhat agreed to, the notion of open contents leads to two aspects of educational design:
    • course contents are open and may be minimalist (especially where crowdsourced), and 
    • the themes, standpoints, formats as well as the type and style of platform or presentations submitted are just as well—more or less—open (online papers and even dissertations and theses, online courses, massive open online courses and many other creative productions and diversified experiments).
There are now two paradigms from which educational design can borrow:
(i) teaching or traditional pedagogy, and
(ii) learning or cognitive activity.
Basically, pedagogy and teaching methods are deployed and applied in the classroom (institutional environment), while learning and the activation of metacognitive processes are among the characteristics of distance education. Whether traditional or distant, the basic institutional mission of universities (traditional and open) is the same, i.e., to admit and enroll a regular university clientele and introduce learners to formal academic training. But open and distance education also provides access to returning persons or persons who travel a different post-adolescence path. When dealing with open learning design, the main difficulties are
(i) to remain within the paradigm of learning,
(ii) to discern metacognitive activity from “the learning experiences encapsulated in the learning and instructional designs” (Anderson), and
(iii) to integrate intervention as little as possible or avoid intervention in the tradition of pedagogy.

A model of representation-based (not location- or technology- based) educational design

Ideation (structured approach): general, basic requirements

It takes an effort to conceive higher education in a radically different perspective. Fortunately, distance education lends itself to observation on the WWW while traditional teaching is performed behind closed doors. I have searched and examined design models and course samples [1] to isolate available course exemplars, and the findings are as follows: 
(i) professors are capable of preparing and achieving (tutoring) their courses entirely
(ii) professors are able to establish the conceptual and communicational markers with respect to their academic discipline, and
(iii) professors—as faculty—are authorised to exercise their intellectual property rights [2] on their teaching productions. Normally, course projects are faculty-driven. It remains to be seen whether opening the professors’ collective agreements on that question would make them more receptive to distance education and if this incentive would further enhance openness in education and sharing educational material (David Wiley, http://opencontent.org/definition/). In other words, should the traditional copyright convention be reversed and read: “materials generated for courses is owned by the author, with institutions given some rights of user” (Couture, Dubé & Malissard 2009).
Generally, establishments elect to impart course design responsibility to an administrative unit or to a project manager and copyright remains with the institution, but in such case the learning design process is faculty-supervised.
Specialists are no doubt essential for mediating courses and they are usually grouped in administrative operational units concerned mostly with media technologies. These specialists are entrusted with embedding the institutional didactic procedures in programs and courses, that is, “pedagogical activities intended to have a direct effect on the student, as opposed to diagnostic activities” (Wenger 1987:395). Distance (open) educational design is on the far side of institutional didactics but is generally thought to be intimately dependent on any number of prescribed communicational procedures. There is another substantial, leading process at work: academic steerage. The post-pedagogical approach to learner workplan
All tasks assigned to technical (operational) units materialize in the form of media or media template, i.e., a website or cloud in which content is inserted and conveyed. This (multi) media method is not always a challenge unless the outcome reflects all of the following:
(i) the outcome reflects the relevant teaching components of the professor’s workplan (often includes research components)
(ii) at the forefront, the outcome reflects the academic features of professor’s discipline, and
(iii) the outcome reflects the learner workplan (much too often the learner workplan will more or less subtly disappear from view behind all the indispensable navigation buttons—course calendar, rules, deadlines, etc., none of which are relevant to the learner’s workplan but are institutional and communicational in their purpose: navigation, look and feel, intelligibility, etc.).
For the purpose of academic open learning design, a course website is generally composed of all the following:
(i) academic ideation (a formal, structured design)
(ii) institutional inputs (that sometimes draw on significant production resources for highly visible disciplines)
(iii) substantial academic contents
(iv) designing faculty
(v) enrolled, registered learners in their private sphere. Students roaming the campus and passing entrances under video surveillance need not be the object of representation: they are local census, head count.
Traditionally, educational course websites were accessed exclusively by enrolled learners under exclusive institutional control. OLDS MOOC 2013 and other previous experiments such as CCK8 (Athabaska University, 2008) provide first generation and root examples of a definite breakthrough after the open universities movement in the early 1970s, subversive open skies in the 1990s with Stevan Harnad (research), then learning objects (teaching-learning) and now open learning design (learning). Clearly, this time, the discussion is on learning and not on the historic culture of pedagogy, i.e., the prescriptive and interventionist transmission of knowledge within the institution’s own and exclusive time-space continuum whether on premises or mediated.

Educational institution, corporation

Universities are institutionalised structures and academic families intertwined into complex administrative strata in which faculty members nurture multiple intra and extra-organizational affiliations.

Academic content, learning activities (qualifying and leading to diplomas and graduation)

All academic disciplines afford their own preferred resources and a variety of educational options on which programs, courses and lessons need to be constructed regardless of educational theory or delivery mode. In particular, course design or plan for learning—as we designers see teaching-learning procedures—and media technologies must accommodate academic representations (contents); media technologies, when used, must be suitable for content conveyance. Ten (10) curriculum components need to be addressed in the planning of students’ hybrid learning according to Van den Akker (2010). Media technologies are dwarfed and found under “materials and resources”. Van den Akker introduces two modifications to his long-standing theory of distance education: (i) “vision” is added to “rationale” as the central mission in the planning of student learning, and (ii) “measure” of learning progress is substituted to “assessment” of learning. One may compare this approach with Nyquist’s (2013:17) “5Ws and an H” designed for medical instructor workshops.
To the average learner, it makes little difference whether (i) the course is designed on the basis of an educational rationale, intention or vision where the design questions refer to (i) learning motivations, (ii) why learners are learning, (iii) which goals they are pursuing—all of which are usually uncommunicated by the learners, if not uncommunicable—or (iv) how they are learning—if different from previous generations of learners. It makes little difference because learning progress is “measured” or “assessed” and is hardly designed to exclude fail marks. Therefore, the learners’ capital motive and goal—especially with beginners—is to succeed. In my experience, learners pay little attention to design and pedagogy unless there is something awry in the system (and even at that, very few will dare come out openly and take exception). Consequently, what is capital in the teaching-learning process is student production, assessed and marked as the outcome of the learners’ involvement or engagement with the workplan—in the form of activities—embedded in the course (Conole’s 7Cs of learning design—http://goo.gl/XR9Fg).

Designing faculty

The research professor’s workplan and employment conditions are determined in a collective agreement. Very often the outcome or product of her academic research can be lodged into the curriculum, at least in part. In that case, course preparation complies with and closes the loop between both components of the establishment’s institutional mission (research and teaching). True, a research professor is never free of administrative and organisational procedures, yet she can exercise exclusive prerogatives under her purview in her discipline although she is not particularly conversant with media technologies that are not the tools of her academic trade or specialty. Her course can be thoroughly designed before it is tipped toward a VLE, LMS, CMS or other system. Such systems often require alterations to the course as originally conceived and introduce their own brand of “insidious pegagogy” by replacing “the instructor’s main strength—their expertise in their discipline and their teaching with their main weakness—technological literacy” (Lane 2009). For this reason, educational design must still be reflected upon from within for all disciplines.

Learners (stakeholders)

The lead-in element of an educational design model is student representation and the fabrication of personas is an attempt at capturing he or she who is not sitting among a group attending a live lecture. For coherence, one must specifically include any learner representations conveyed in the course material, especially where no such representation is included in the corporate or institutional messages directed at the learning clientele (explicit metacognitive guidance may serve that purpose).
Where learners enrolled in distance and online university programs or courses, we need to assume:
(i) that learners engage in a learning process from their private (and sometimes professional) sphere
(ii) that the characteristics which define these learners include autonomy and social distance; consequently, designers need to acknowledge that the establishment
  • abandons the requirements for mandatory physical presence of persons on campus
  • foregoes the parental posture so typical of pedagogy
  • gives up the idea that distant learners are isolated
(iii) we also need to assume that this post-pedagogical approach inherent to open learning design requires more intensive metacognitive efforts on the part of learners and that
(iv) in this educational framework the efficiency and performance requirements are generally more demanding in terms of informational and discursive skills.
Open and distance higher education offers learning workplans to be executed or performed in one’s personal (family, social, professional) environment. The sum of such learning activities is designed to meet not only their needs but their inclinations, potential, ambition and choices among the academic paths available. Learning workplans are achieved using technologies and devices identical to or compatible with that of the establishment.
Learner representation is a problem in open and distance higher education. When learner characteristics include the private sphere, an important element of pedagogy disappears: the collective character inherent to the classroom, the learning community, and even the peer-to-peer character of education. The ‘collective’ notion, branded since early schooling and inherent to institutional education, its concepts and discourse, is likely to be the most difficult to overcome although MOOCs are attempts at shedding the predominantly institutional character of education. Massive is beyond collective.
Specifically in open and distance education, the collective approach (including peer-to-peer) is taken for granted and posits that distant learners will regroup, aggregate or cluster in some coherent form. We are familiar with this concept but after 40+ years of open and distant education, the effectiveness and usefulness of the collective pedagogical model remains to be demonstrated (it does save course or lesson—learning unit preparation time and tutoring effort).
Educational designers and institutional agents need to reflect differently on the learner as an all round active and autonomous individual, complete with social status: hence the reference to the private (not the location-based, institutional) sphere as the all-embracing characteristic of distant learners. Likewise, technology-enhanced teaching is not as relevant for distant learners as it is in the literature or for institutional course designers since most learners pay little attention to educational technologies in themselves and to institutional arrangements and tools. Students are concerned with formal, academic, discipline-specific contents in workplans that afford the learning framework or the means conducive to knowledge construction or revision.
For distant learners, all the educational purposes and intentions need to be conveyed through the proposed course interface. Their design needs to be explicit, accessible for viewing and study in the private sphere away from the noise and distractions of campus (social) life.
The items within reach with respect to representation-based educational design are | Contents (formal, academic) | Context (establishment) | Co-design (documented iterative faculty-driven process) | Systems (available at the establishment or mastered by the professor and co-design team) | Procedures (institutional policies embedded in the design process).
For learners, however, the end result has an entirely different outlook, for example: Contextual (admission, enrollment) | Conditional (systems accessibility, faultless efficiency) | Substantial [3] (content-related Activities —academic, cultural, formal and informal) | Tangible (certification and qualification).

Explicit, detailed and formal Educational Design

Educational Design defines the visible and readable aspects of what is normally viewed as a design exercise, that is, an ideation process recorded in communicable form, rooted in discipline-specific knowledge representations which are derived or borrowed from new or less recent (updated, synthesised) academic research.
“ Educational Design: a design exercise rooted in discipline-specific knowledge representations derived from academic research.
Course design model means a matrix that is not necessarily a system, or is a system in which all the components are individually malleable or flexible (or even ephemeral in the sense of single-use). A Student Workplan is at the heart of explicit educational (course) designs, i.e., activities proposed to students by the designing professor.
In conformity with our vision and practice of open and distant education, course design (Ideation) includes the characteristics of institutional didactics (Van den Boom and Schlusmans 1989), where:
(i) ideation confers to the design process a set of cognitive and academic (discipline-specific) idiosyncrasies, including any discretionary approach or modalities determined by the designing professor
(ii) where implementation and delivery remain essentially under institutional responsibility (institutional services), and where
(iii) course performance by the student closes the loop (the workplan is achieved successfully). In this approach, the educational process must imperatively include course performance by the learner otherwise student evaluation is disowned.
The introduction of ‘ideation’ in the process of designing open (online, distant) courses and programs provides the teaching professor with sufficient control and power to advance the academic foundations, necessities and multiple representations of the discipline of her specialty that must govern the design process.
In the proposed model, Ideation is substituted to MediaTechnologies at the forefront of the designing  concern. But why? In the general ADDIE system the second term is actually the all-encompassing “Design” notion in which only media choices are made; this reduces the discipline-specific input to mere cargo. By introducing Ideation over MediaTechnologies, the pre-emption of educational technologies is removed and more flexibility is provided to all participants, including the designing faculty.
A simple concept will not be enough settlement in the current instructional media culture. The ADDIE theory or system and the pedagogical methods associated with today’s instructional media are now institutionalised and deeply embedded into the organization of work. In a post-pedagogical vision of education and training, all notions are not equal and designing professors must be recognized as the leaders in the hierarchy of work, and the copyright holders if so they wish (OERs are not on par with research papers in this respect).

Contexts (general and specific)

General context: educational (not utterly institutional or technological)

Of course the general context of higher education is institutional. This context is nonetheless contingent or adaptable and it can now accommodate extra muros experiment on exclusively technological substrates[11] as George Siemens and Stephen Downes have demonstrated since 2008.
 “ [11] Recent projects of radical design by Siemens and Downes were conducted in an institutional context. Extra muros participants were invited to contribute input in real time during the course along that of enrolled students. The process is not just participative or interactive but connectivist and it opens to action-research. Although not connectivist, OLDS MOOC is tuned to research.

Unique formal academic learning framework : teaching-research

Among all levels of education, only the university and college level can bring learning and research together and make them overlap. In order to appreciate distance learning, one must recognise the rather stable institutional aspect of education. Yet, with respect to the post-pedagogical nature of this approach (open, continuous enrollment—open content) every aspect and component of a course should be revisable by the professor, even in the design process, on the same basis as the cognitive representations derived from research. This context, typical of distance education (adjoining research and learning) is intended to enhance the learner workplan with multiple representations. To this end, however,  we need to escape the inhibiting ‘instructional media’ approach (and its implicit techno pedagogical theory) and invest explicitly in all the representations needed (institutional, educational, technological, discipline-specific and representations of the learners themselves—probably the most difficult).

Progressive design procedures

Progressive or iterative design often means a constructive cycle (information, revision, refinement) in which the designer tends to achieve by himself all the steps of the process with support from media specialists. This, however, assumes that professors will eventually become familiar with LMS or other complex systems and that they will design enough courses over their career to become familiar with one or several such systems. All this is very unlikely given the never ending innovative rush.
In the process, the designing faculty controls and manages all the aspects of the course (learning units, personal archiving of the production). After each quality control procedure, the course may be deployed online section by section as components become available. Generally, the designing faculty remains in control of his course—cross actions, while the establishment manages the technical operations—modular actions. (Henri et al. 2007)
In the process of preparing a progressive design—archived in the professor’s personal productions—the course is described in text form and the layout includes the essential components: (i) material aspects where necessary (by others), (ii) means or methods of learner-instructor interaction, (iii) sequencing of events or other routines or chains of events (often translated into a study guide with explanations, directions, a manual or body of literature, etc.). in addition to course contents, the description of the course and its design will also be discipline-specific.
In many cases, the progressive design may also take the form of a learner work-plan instead of a course outline or syllabus or a lesson plan. For example, in the case of some job readiness training or for admission to some standardised and regulated profession (internship/practicum), course programming will be discipline-specific regardless of the technologies that convey the material. Learning thus progresses from theory to field practice.
To ensure progressiveness, the design process needs to be expressed properly. At or near completion, all aspects of the project must be communicable and include no concealed or implicit intelligence. The design must demonstrate all the effective attributes of the course and expose all the representations therein conveyed. Representation-based educational design is based on an approach whereby the preparation process is itself the object of representation (a descriptive record); some would prefer ‘follow-up’, ‘modeling’ or ‘procedure’, ‘checklist’, ‘quality control’ or ‘management chart’ but we can agree on a more neutral expression: to visualise the process or its traces during project development.
The entire preparation requires that all participants and contributors show or verbalize and share their thoughts, ideas on the concepts deemed appropriate for the project. In other words, a challenge exists for all participants to represent their contribution—visually or in text form.
Thus, when the ultimate reader peruses what has been prepared for learners, he should be able to quickly access the unique characteristics and patterns of the course and not a standardised web site with a typical or pre-set menus, pages and navigation buttons. Instead, the web site should highlight the learner workplan—where this scenario is implemented—and urge the student to put in hand without delay the course in that productive perspective.
Is a scalable or progressive design preferable to a prescriptive approach? Where the course cannot come to terms with a rigid form, pre-set framework or preprogrammed layout, progressive design provides the designing faculty with two warmly welcomed handles: (i) more micro-control over the design process and (ii) opportunities to tap into the talents of collaborators to the full extent of their declared competencies. In other words, course project sequencing and its representation will not boil down to single leading notions the like of course or activity ‘calendar’ or representations of the participants’ ‘roles and responsibilities’.

Co-design entities

Institution, establishment

Institution means the teaching environment personified by the establishment’s agents specialised in media infrastructures, administrative and teaching staff involved in course preparation or delivery, and persons who come in contact with the learners.

Other stakeholders and issues

Participants in course preparation include (i) the designing faculty; course design may also include or call upon (ii) education or computer (IT) professionals and (iii) institutional agents and employees such as research assistants, tutors or instructors.
The professor may prepare his course exclusively in text and have it processed and included ‘as is’ in the course catalog. This ensures that the course is delivered exactly as designed and without the introduction of most foreign and para-disciplinary representations conveyed in your standard LMS, CMS, KMS, etc. In my understanding, experiments with homegrown environments such as Cloudworks fuel the ever growing movement toward faculty autonomy and accelerating institutional (college, university) replenishment.

Users: enrolled

Each entity participating to a teaching-learning project (course, program) needs to have the appropriate channels and means of expression, engages in the design process at their assigned level and with prodigality (some throughout the process or briefly, and even over the entire life cycle of the course or program). Ultimately, all the contributions to an intellectual project will generate a learning environment that is a course: 
(i) that constitutes a form of discipline-specific intervention in a student’s educational path and academic progress;
(ii) that provides a space for interaction and exchange and expressly request learner involvement;
(iii) a space divided into phases, steps or set points;
(iv) a space that nevertheless captures the general educational and institutional attributes;
(v) homogeneous interfaces (in the case of a website) ;
(vi) explicit communication mechanisms and policies;
(vii) activities;
(viii) and everything that is absolutely required to propose a beneficial or useful learning experience, preferably with feedback to the learners at the end of the initiative to wrap up the design process.

System (procedures)

Authentication (department, faculty)

The design—or the discipline-specific teaching-learning—is often subject to approval by a disciplinary collective (teaching-learning unit, department, faculty). This ensures not only coherence with existing or projected courses or programs but also cohesion and complementarity between and among institutional participants and faculty members. The approach to course design along the ‘student work plan’ issues is an inescapable yet tension abating argument beyond the ‘student-centered’, beyond the ‘technology-enhanced’ and other incidental discourses (in the stand and deliver process, everything is incidental to that delivery; in distance education, everything is incidental to the learning process conducted by the student).

Validation

A course project will normally undergo a validation phase. Educational design theories and procedures usually refer to modeling, simulation, prototyping, several forms of testing and independent oversight. This phase is particularly instructive in the case of representation-based design where the student workplan is implemented as the learning framework. This leads to a true prototyping or testing subject to academic criteria [13] and not just a silent media usability procedure.
“ [13] Among others, the course subject matter is problem-oriented within the discipline on hand; the course refers to academic research, authors and references; follows up on this research and on any potential or emerging breakthrough or innovative concepts, new grounds or practices, prospective research, etc.: the intellectual space or continuum.

Delivery, execution

Where media technologies are given front stage without challenge, that is, when educational design is all about media operationalization, it appears that usability testing may be required, especially where new software or software versions are used. Very little detail is available on course prototyping or testing. One may however assume that in this instance undisclosed technical supervision will extend into the delivery of courses and programs and exclude the designing faculty from the loop. True and comprehensive testing of a course should include every component: of course the student workplan, but also the supporting technologies and the communication infrastructures provided by the establishment.

Course/programme on offer: contents

Student workplan

In this paper, the expression Course/Programme On Offer means the educational design products that are, most often, fashioned by a collective of collaborators. But we must not forget that such offer is included in an academic teaching-learning programme. It necessarily includes a student workplan, that is, activities that learners are expected to perform with success. In the case of representation-based design, the construction of the course generates all kinds of different representations (mainly discipline-specific, and institutional) but this does not alter the fact that students will seek his or her workplan in the contents provided. The expressions design product, course, programme, offer, and contents all refer to the same object or body created from an assembly of multiple and diversified representations among which discipline-specific representations are the most significant for the learner. Learner work plans usually include explicit criteria for the evaluation and marking of student productions, course credits, continuing in the programme and ultimately granting a diploma.

Learning process

Learning Process is meant to designate the activities included in the learner workplan and performed by the student. The question concerning ‘how students learn?’ is at the forefront of pedagogy since the 1960s at the outset of the instructional media movement when educators wanted to improve both teaching and learning with the support of audiovisual technologies.
Research on educational design should consider that learning is a conscious and deliberate activity, especially in the light of metacognition. The word Activity is chosen to speak of metacognition because metacognitive processes are not a definite set of intellectual aptitudes or psychological states (Pollet 2001:148; Richer et Daudelin 2000:13-14; Deschênes 1992:37; Paquette et al. 2002:10). Indeed many teaching professors active in distance education over the past 30 years expressly request this type of activity from their students, especially:
 “ We now use the concept of metacognition to define the notion of autonomy frequently mentioned in books on education and psychology. In the realm of learning, autonomy may be defined as learner’s self-management of one or several aspects of his learning activity (Deschênes 1992:37, italics added).
In order to keep things simple, we posit that metacognitive activities are the expression of a desire (want) to learn. In college or university, (i) work on representations and metacognition make a pair, (ii) notions such as self-guidance, planning, focusing attention and regulation are fundamental skills to address complexity, (iii) metacognition is pivotal in independent learning and (iv) metacognitive processes revolve around planning-monitoring-objectivation cycles elicited in a workplan at the crossroad of educational design and learners’ sustained efforts. 

REPRESENTATION-BASED EDUCATIONAL DESIGN: A LEARNER WORK PLAN APPROACH (within the learning —not the teaching— paradigm)

A Student Workplan approach to educational design

Teaching Situation — Learner Context
In distance education there is hardly any 'teaching situation' but there is much to think about ‘learner context’. Clearly for educational purposes, any teaching-learning project should uncover its institutional underpinnings, whether teaching takes place on a campus or in a ‘learning environment’, especially in open education establishments which are subject to endless media technology changes and innovations. As well, designers need to realize that nothing they do individually or collectively in the institutional environment will ever match the variety among users themselves in their personal or private sphere. New representations of ‘distant learners’ are required if we are to answer the question concerning “student characteristics” (Gustafson & Branch 2002:28) and develop post-pedagogical open learning design approaches that are usable in a host of academic disciplines.

Change — Challenge 

For learners, it makes no difference if designers (institutional agents) bring ‘change’ or meet a ‘challenge’ in any experimental or actual online course or program since most students and learners will never give a second thought to or probe or deconstruct the learning environments presented to them. Therefore, where institutional approaches are concerned, choices are organisationally made between (i) fully distant and open educational design (faculty-driven or faculty-led), (ii) traditional classroom management with stand & deliver performance, and (iii) hybrid (blended) delivery systems; at those levels, some form of generalisation is possible and typically rests on the ‘collective’ (pedagogical) approach in which learners and learning are ignored (are not the object of representation, are provided no representational structures) in spite of the learner-centered discourse. Likewise, if we are to genuinely re-orient educational research, it should be done on a premise whereby professors may claim the intellectual rights on their teaching productions.

#olds mooc « Ideation »

Introducing Ideation among nine 9 activities, steps, as follows:
  1. Course Features (key features of a course, module or learning event). In reference to the OULDI course features page, the module mentions "design problems" or constraints that have all to do with institutional concerns: "potentially high student numbers, minimal IT support, students at risk of not completing, mixed experience of learning and technology, low learning confidence/ resilience...etc etc", that is, Admission, Enrollment ; may refer to some "inherent ‘master’ design".
  2. Course Map (conceptualize —  i.e what are you designing and why, who are you designing for?). Successive weblinks lead to OULDI - Course Map Page. References to concept mapping are afforded (cf. the 7Cs of Learning Design and the unattributed course maps #1,#2,#3 below). While some are familiar with such tools, many still need "time to understand and experiment with unfamiliar teaching approaches, such as the use of concept mapping and the various interconnected technologies which would support individual and group enquiry-based learning." (Spence et al. 2012:1) What is surprising here is that concept mapping is construed as a teaching approach.
  3. Activity Profile * (formerly pedagogy profile). Choice or selection of pedagogical methods are offered between > Assimilative (attending and understanding content - or relationship to knowledge),Information handling (e.g. gathering and classifying resources or manipulating data), Adaptive (use of modelling or simulation software), Communicative (dialogic activities, e.g. pair dialogues or group-based discussions), and Productive (construction of an artefact such as a written essay, new chemical compound or a sculpture) and Experiential (practising skills in a particular context or undertaking an investigation).
  4. Viewpoints cards: Assessment and Feedback. Please read 'Clarify Good Performance' on the left side of the image outlining a process where 'Curriculum Creativity' is last ). A number of types of creative | learning spaces were recently identified for universities, a typology which neatly applies to online environments as well: Solitary Space, Team Space, Tinker Space, Presentation Space, Transition Spaces (informal exchange); includes such notions as space as a knowledge repository, as an indicator of a specific culture, as a process manifestation, as a social dimension, as a source of stimulation. (Thoring, Luippold and Mueller 2012:196)  Nevertheless, 'Clarify Good Performance' means what it says on the front of the card (goals, criteria, standards) and develops into explicit (behaviorial) conformance on the back of the card probably intended for classroom work ('roles and responsibilities'). 
  5. Viewpoints learner engagement cards (Good teaching and learning practice should encourage learners to "Receive"). This blunt pedagogical —  no, didactic — statement, after laying out conformance requirements under the guise of Performance associated with goals, criteria, standards, places learners at the receiving end of the teaching process. In the traditional or hybrid setting, involves compulsory attendance; in online learning or a MOOC, mobility restrictions. 
  6. Storyboard (Carpe Diem Story board). The approach is basically a time sequence in weeks; content is broken down into topics to which learning activities are attached; provision is made for producing the resources, assessing events and, finally, the learning objectives. 
  7. Discussion Cloudscape (oldsmooc google groups)
  8. Reflection Cloudscape (What three words describe this week's activities? What did you like about this week? What could be improved?)
  9. Action Plan Cloudscape (Post your participant Action Plan as a Cloud).
The Learners' Activities * approach (item 3 in above list) is so deeply embedded in the current theory of online teaching-learning (design) that countless versions exist, including within this MOOC in the «Week 4 - Connect» segment  (cf. activity 1.2), but in another livery (below: Learner activities: Design left column - Field right column).

Learner activities as reiterated in week 4: Design (left column) Field (right column) — production appears twice 

+conole

Analysis of Gráinne Conole's 7Cs 

Items 8 and 9 are not included in Conole's 7Cs approach. The seven Cs of learning design are shown below in their given layout and hierarchy.

The 7Cs of learning Design

+Conole's 7Cs of learning designAlthough learner activities seem predominant here and in the following three more or less detailed course design representations | maps, the starting point is systematically the teacher's or designer's view of the course or module.

Course map #1 (unattributed)

+student activities

Course map #2 (unattributed)

+student activities 2

Course map #3 (unattributed)

+student activities 3
 At face value, there is definite convergence among the above representations with respect to student activities (learner centered) approaches. All representations intend to support and reinforce student or learner activities yet some indicate "Guidance and Support" (teacher field tasks) or "Vision | Conceptualise" (designer tasks) as the leading thrusts. It is tempting to extend the 7Cs map into a designer vector whereby "Vision | Conceptualise" (designer tasks) actually cap the basic field hierarchy (learner activitie or workplan), as follows:

Extension | deconstruction of Conole's 7Cs of Learning Design

+extension of Conole's 7Cs of learning design
This analysis isolates student | learner activities as the central element of educational design but raises a number of questions, and mainly whether the approach at hand can be well and successfully applied to academic disciplines other than education or teacher training, by professors of, say, geography, sociology, (name your own specialty from this list).
Nevertheless, the very title of the OLDS-MOOC Week 3 Module, « IDEATE » indicates that (i) the module is the work of a learning designer ("Vision | Conceptualise" aka "Ideate"), and that (ii) course maps #1, #2 and #3 share some DNA with the 7Cs model, that is, learner activities are central to educational design. The business of teaching used to be the teacher's course outline and I gather, from the string of conservative educational design representations above, that the visibility and salience of learner academic workplan (cognitive activities) is an indication that pedagogy could evolve (pedagogy to activity profile), however slowly, into educational design for the 21st century.

SPENCE, N., GROOM, D., DE MARCO, O., PARKER, R., IRELAND, M., WARDLE, M. 2012. A Brave New World: introducing the planets online. Ascilite 2012. (http://goo.gl/VX6WT)
THORING, K., LUIPPOLD, C., MUELLER, R.M. 2012. Creative space in design education: A typology of spatial functions. International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, 6 & 7 september 2012, Artesis University College, Antwerp, Belgium. (http://goo.gl/e85Ou)

#olds mooc Context?

Context ? (you mean external)

Learner context is believed to be the participants' knowledge and skills, their cognitive environment, filtered as it were; it is often meant to include learning tools. I argue that tools (technical means) and attitudes and dispositions (motivation, varying emotions, affect) are to be separated, at this early stage, from the cognitive just as institutional agency and prescriptions need to be distinguished from academic necessities and requirements. Learner context needs to be considered, first, in the cognitive aspects since our object, our responsibility, is education and we objectively need "approaches to teaching and learning that don't make assumptions about the motivations and interests of students" (Pegg). To distant learners, institutional context is external, foreign, and few will ever give a second thought to the pedagogy behind a schema. 
For the purpose of educational design, I do separate learners cognition from their motivation, affect, and context because, in a design perspective (and not field work in the classroom or online environment when design is done and running), the contexts (i.e., design context: our institution, establishment) (i.e., teaching context: classroom or online learning environment) (i.e., learning context: private, personal, at home or office) are not yet joined but will be eventually, although very loosely and disconnectedly in the "post-temponormative" affordance of online environments (Ihanainen and Moravec 2011:36). If the design environment itself is institutional or corporate, then, in that design perspective, learner context is remote. Conversely, where learners are actively engaged with processing and learning or debating new knowledge, the institutional context is at least external to them and the focus is on content.
This student also sees the course as an entity, but in terms of something with which/whom he needs to negotiate. The people designing the course, the people delivering the course, the people administering the course, are all seen as one entity with no differentiation as to roles and responsibilities. The course is seen as a significant other with whom to negotiate, it could even be seen as an opponent. (Williams 2008:56) 
Further, no 'internal' context needs to be construed. There is, objectively, no 'internal' (uncommunicable or uncommunicated) context unless bordering on philosophy of mind (not going there except for the private, intimate metacognitive). In this respect I like to remind myself of Wenger's approach whereby "models of communicable knowledge" need only be considered, that is, "a representation of knowledge very broadly, as a mapping of knowledge into a physical medium" (Wenger 1987:312). 
As well, when preparing, designing a course or module, the concern is with curriculum, knowledge. Indeed we make room for communication and collaboration, but we don't know yet what will be conveyed; again there is no reason to presume of any entity's 'internal' (uncommunicated and often uncommunicable) context. In my design tasks, I can further leave out the learner's private sphere because there are basic institutional requirements or prescriptions addressing that: own or access a computer with online connection, operate word processor and other software programs, navigate online, etc. In addition, from the moment learners are admitted and enrolled, I must presume that they are 'cognitively' able (although there are surprises or cultural challenges in the feedback). Likewise, I must presume that the learner has engaged into the admission and enrollment process, and paid tuition, and is therefore in an appropriate state of mind and mature enough (speaking of higher education). Then, where 'pedagogical' or 'post-pedagogical' characteristics are imparted to the design, it is usually a matter of institutional orientation or, as I have seen, the individual professor's overriding decision with respect to her discipline (for example, normative environmental or health and safety knowledge).  

Metacognition

What little we know about metacognition provides insights on the learning process (how learning is effected and not 'what is learning').  This, in turn, is useful to outline a distant learner profile and characteristics. Metacognition is a very active if not comprehensive notion that includes self-awareness whereby "[e]xamples of self-awareness corollaries are sense of agency, Theory-of-Mind (ToM; making inferences about others’ mental states), self-description, self-evaluation, self-esteem, self-regulation, self-efficacy, death awareness, self-conscious emotions, self-recognition, and self-talk" (Morin 2011). Therefore, prying into learners' motives (motivation) should be excluded from the designer's concerns (especially where educational design is organised around work-based learning or a student workplan).
Metacognition is also defined as the self-management aspect of learning—or autonomy—and may be broken down to metacognitive skills: self-guidance, planning, conscious attention in action, regulation, piloting, anticipation, correction, assessing and diagnosing the situation at hand and adjusting one's approach as needed. The latter adjustment process drives the learner to gather new information or data and initiate or "engage into another planning-supervision-objectivation cycle" (Paquette, de la Teja, Lundgren-Cayrol, Léonard & Ruelland 2002:10).

 ... and programming (or control)

Older, seemingly unrelated concepts are germane to metacognition with respect to this self-applied cyclical approach. Let us revisit a flamboyant cybernetic definition of learning proposed in the early 1950s: 
I repeat, feedback is a method of controlling a system by reinserting into it the results of its past performance. If these results are merely used as numerical data for the criticism of the system and its regulation, we have the simple feedback of the control engineers. If, however, the information which proceeds backward from the performance is able to change the general method and pattern of performance, we have a process which may well be called learning. (Wiener 1950,1954:61) [italics added]

Learning is deliberate...

 ... and, for active learners, it not a by-product or result of exposure to context or environments. But self-awareness and metacognition (self controlled cognitive cycling) are not the only items of focus in the learning process; they largely depend on volition and on deliberate action; let's call this 'attention' and read again a crucial AI (artificial intelligence) lesson from a not so distant past (yet pre-MS-DOS):
In particular, the learning participant must have a need to cooperate in order to learn the topics in a conversational domain, which he has agreed to do in the initial contract. The other participant must be in a position to provide this cooperation and foster understanding. Finally, insofar as procedure sharing or program sharing depends upon local synchronisation of the brains or processors involved, the occasions of a strict conversation are intervals of partial synchronisation between the participants during which they both attend to the same topic. Notably, such occasions are rare in nature. Brains, unlike computing machines, are not a priori synchronised by a master clock and it takes an act of attention to secure synchronicity. (Pask 1976:6-7)  [italics added]

Psychological distance

With respect to learner context, another approach is useful to tie-in 'distance' with 'learning': psychological distance and social distance. According to Nira Liberman (2007), social distance is defined as hypotheticality, i.e., a zero point which is my direct experience of the here and now and is different from anything else—other times, other places, experiences of other people and hypothetical alternatives to reality (Liberman, Trope & Stephan 2007:353). Yet, social distance and hypotheticality, and spatial distance, and temporal distance "all share a common meaning as instances of psychological distance" and are interchangeable as they all involve a higher level of construal.  "A high level construal represents actions in terms of one’s  primary goals, whereas a low level construal depicts the secondary/incidental features of these goals (Higgins & Trope, 1990)." (Basoglu and Yoo 2012:221-222) 

Learner distanciation

Liberman's theory of social distance bring to a halt the social contradiction of roles often associated with distant education and offers a key "that enables adult students to maintain their sense of status and power" (Garland 1994). Indeed there is definitely a form of social distance between the establishment and the learner when the latter is not required to appear on campus. Thefore 'context' , in its current educational metaphor (filtered), may not apply to distant learners. Distant learning introduces different dynamics that shift more weight on learners' relationship to knowledge (and less to professors who teach, less to socialising with peers and less to the socio-institutional sphere). This very specific type of learner distanciation can be mapped as follows to illustrate a more accurate learner context for distance, open education.
relationship_to_knowledge

Open, distance educational design

This reflection is not intended to wipe out context but (i) to limit 'context' to the socio-institutional environment in which designers work and (ii) to replace the all encompassing technologically-centered design with a more appropriate representation of EDUCATIONAL (cognitive, academic) DESIGN. i.e., curriculum design, as follows:


Discussion

In the early years of instructional design (from the mid-70s to the late 90s) online courses were few and the ADDIE approach dates back to that period. Academic curriculum was adapted to whatever technology available (MS-DOS 1981, Windows 3.0 1990, Windows NT 1991, Win 95, Win 98). Today, computer systems and authoring software have introduced full layers of media, service professionals and agents in and around universities and colleges yet the very same curricula need to be learned (accounting, literature, etc.) — plus a host of new computer and software related disciplines. In universities, these layers of scholars and professionals are now integral to the institutional context and responsible for their academic disciplines. I am convinced that they too use an approach that enables their students to gather around a student workplan designed to promote learner development. 
I have compared traditional teaching-learning with learning environements (none typical, really) and this is an attempt at exploring redefinitions of distance, open learning, from a learner's viewpoint. The viewpont is that of studying and learning, i.e., cognitive (not the computational metaphor of cognitivism, and, for most, learning not theoretically rooted in Technology except for word processing conceived as the most complex and far reaching system of writing ever afforded and used for both text and command line). In a nutshell, learners who do not attend campus activities do not come under the care or responsibility of the establishment. Their status shares nothing with the standard student status, i.e., that of a 'person with a future' — a futurible — as compared with the institutional status of professors and professionals governed by their respective employment conditions and workplans. Distance learners work from the private sphere and their attending of open, distance universities changes little to their relationship to and status within society until they are eventually granted diplomas. Meanwhile, hardly anything is changed in their personal contexts and it is somewhat deceitful to burden educational design with unverifiable, uncontrolled assumptions unless we simply wish (i) to gloss over institutional prescriptions, educational practices or actual approaches (they would, on the contrary, benefit from the exposure) or (ii) to awkwardly protect distance education against threats to its credibility or livelihood (Daniel 2010).
The ultimate question is not 'what is learning?'. Most of us are professional learners and yet we are at a loss for a definition. Let us ask instead 'how to support metacognitive efforts in online learning'. I think we need to provide and underline a few honest and engaging paragraphs on that very subject—, metacognition or the workings of cognition—in the study guides and in the course presentation pages and who knows, learners might just recognise themselves. We may even follow up with a few references or quotes on the sentiment of self-efficacy. The latter is somewhat motivational, and neither are 'interventions' in the tradition of pedagogy. 

BASOGLU, K.A. and JUNG-EUN YOO, J. 2012. For business or pleasure?: Effect of time horizon on travel decisions. In Nicole L. Davis and Randal Baker, eds, Sustainable Education in Travel and Tourism. Annual Conference Proceedings of Research and Academic Papers Annual Conference Proceedings of Research and Academic Papers, Volume XXIV. 31st Annual ISTTE Conference,  October 16-18, Freiburg, Germany. St Clair Shores, MI: International Society of Travel & Tourism Educators. (http://www.istte.org/2012Conf.pdf)
DANIEL, J. 2010. Distance Education under Threat: an Opportunity? Commonwaelth of Learning (COL). (http://goo.gl/2rHyD)
GARLAND, M.R. 1994. The Adult Need for « Personal Control » Provides a Cogent Guiding Concept for Distance Education. Journal of Distance Education, IX(1), 45-60. (http://goo.gl/xCTkX)
IHANAINEN, P. and MORAVEC, J. 2011. Pointillist, cyclical, and overlapping: Multidimensional facets of time in online education. IRRODL Vol 12, No 7, p.27-39.
LIBERMAN, N., TROPE, Y. & STEPHAN, E. 2007. Psychological Distance. In Kruglanski, A. W., Higgins, E. T. dir., Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (2Ed.). New York: Guilford Press, 353-381. (http://goo.gl/TJjRJ)
MORIN, A. 2011. Self-awareness Part 1: Definition, measures, effects, functions, and antecedents. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Volume 5, Issue 10, p. 807–823, October. (http://goo.gl/y3dgQ)
PAQUETTE, G, de la TEJA, I, LUNDGREN-CAYROL, K., LÉONARD, M. & RUELLAND, D. 2002. La modélisation cognitive, un outil de conception des processus et des méthodes d’un campus virtuel. Revue de l’éducation à distance, 17(3), 4-28. (http://goo.gl/33CfY)
PASK, G. (1976) Conversation theory : Applications in education and epistemology. Amsterdam : Elsevier.
THORING, K., LUIPPOLD, C., MUELLER, R.M. 2012. Creative space in design education: A typology of spatial functions. International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, 6 & 7 september 2012, Artesis University College, Antwerp, Belgium. 
WENGER, E. 1987. Artificial intelligence and tutoring systems: computational and cognitive approaches to the communication of knowledge. Los Altos: Morgan Kaufmann.
WIENER, N. 1950,1954. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Da capo Press 1988 (google books http://goo.gl/Qz0Kq p.61)
WILLIAMS, R. 2008. Affordances for Learning and Research. Project Report: Affordances for Learning. University of Portsmouth. (http://goo.gl/oryxZ)

#olds mooc Post-Pedagogical Academic Design

POST-PEDAGOGICAL ACADEMIC DESIGN

Van den Akker et Kuiper (2008) list a number of studies on existing models and among them Gustafson & Branch (2002) who account for 15 models in 3 categories: 4 models for the classroom, 5 computer modules and 6 comprehensive distant | computer education models (applicable to courses and eventually to diploma granting programs). The survey conducted by Gustafson & Branch in 2002 on teaching models is an update (4Ed) of earlier work (early 80s). At that time, open (distant) education was not very developed or assertive as is the case today with MOOCS. Only 10 years ago and according to Gustafson & Branch educational design had to be selected according to some applicable context whereby 
  • teaching occurs in a classroom—classroom-oriented, 
  • the course would be delivered by other than the designer—product-oriented, or 
  • the training is complex and directed toward problem solving or in pursuit of organisational objectives—systems-oriented.
Among the approaches examined by the authors, the Barson model was one of the very few that was assessed in a number of establishments. Further, the expression 'instructional development (ID)' used by Barson meant the systematic process by which teaching was to be improved and originated from Michigan State University (MSU) between 1961 and 1965 during the early audiovisual revolution.The authors also mention computer-based instruction which is naturally associated with distant learning and requires "highly prescriptive ID models" or products (Gustafson & Branch 2002:31). In the 2002 version of the inventory, 5 models examine the distant computer approach based on an institutional development process: 
  • assess the product (need product?)
  • the product will be generated and not selected or adapted from some existing material (one of the basic design requirements or condition)  
  • testing and reviews of the product, and
  • the product is designed for use by the learners under the supervision of tutors and not professors (p.30).
The 5 models for distant learning are as follows (according to Gustafson & Branch 2002, in order of appearance: Bergman & Moore 1990, de Hoog, de Jong & de Vries 1994, Bates 1995, Nieveen 1997, Seels & Glasgow 1998).
Bergman & Moore. The Bergman & Moore model deals with the management of interactive teaching projects (video and multimedia). The approach is managed using checklist controls and students are nowhere mentioned. The models provides for activities such as "analysis, design, develop, produce, author, and validate" (p.32). 
de Hoog, de Jong et de Vries. This model was conceived to prepare simulations or expert systems and it includes 5 independent anchors concurrently deployed within the institutional production context: a learner model, a computer/software design model, an operational model, an instructional model and and an interface. 
Bates. The model designed by Bates rests on 4 educational and institutional steps or phases: (i) the course outline, (ii) selecting the media, (iii) preparing and producing the materials and (iv) course delivery. The process is in the hands of 3 actors: (i) the project manager, with the support of (ii) content experts and (iii) instructional designers. With respect to the course outline, that is the initial phase of the process, 4 tasks or responsibilities are institutional control: (i) identifying the target group, (ii) determining the place of the course within the program or curriculum, (iii) authorising and validating course contents and (iv) authorising and validating the chosen pedagogical approach ("teaching approach agreed"). The Bates model mentions learners at the outset of the process (target group) and at the end for the assessment of learning. 
Nieveen. The Nieveen model is called ‘Cascade’ and proceeds from a doctoral thesis. It is based on 4 cycles: specifications, an outline of the instructional package, ajustment of detailed instructional material and their assembly. All phases are analysed and assessed for quality with regard to learners' formative evaluation with testing on small groups and field testing on a larger group. 
Seels & Glasgow. The  Seels & Glasgow model is typically managerial: managing the needs analysis, managing instructional design, managing implementation (this phase includes the preparation of learning material, course delivery, support structures, assessment of student production and recruitment).In general, the above models hadly mention students and learners except as follows: entry behavior expected of typical students—p.48; student knowledge, attitudes and priorities—p.55; level of readiness—p.28; model intended for graduate students—p.49; students number, location—p.49; student needs—p.56; measuring student achievement and the students’ attitudes toward the content and instruction—p.31; how student attention and motivation will be maintained—p.26, all of which are characteristics of the former audiovisual instructional media. 
For all intents and purposes the survey conducted by Gustafson & Branch poses one of the most typical questions: « What instructional strategies are most appropriate in terms of objectives and student characteristics? » (Gustafson & Branch 2002:28). Set in the form of ‘strategies’, that very question generously imparts a pedagogical hue to institutional concerns and strategy is clearly substituted to pedagogy and teaching in their traditional forms. Whether the concern is improved teaching, better teaching or simply teaching—didactics, the 'teaching process' cannot be substituted to the learning process in curriculum design (traditional or distant), and learning is explicitely the focus of open | distant education:
 ... the Didaktik parameter of good teaching is not the degree to which the students master the content as delineated in the curriculum, but rather the question if and how the educative substance could be opened up for the student as intended; more exactly, if and how it became open in their individual meeting with the content in the given teaching process" (Hopmann 2007:117).
The latter question, however, concerning student characteristics is always left to the backrooms—or had not been explored in the 1990s and early 2000s literature; this must be expected to remain for as long as orthodox contextual and situational approaches prevail.
Open or distant learning operates under a surrogate contextual or situational gloss over called 'learning environment'. Yet that concept still does not provide answers to the question concerning the characteristics of students that are neither in class or on the campus. Thus, one cannot measure or assess the immediate impact open | distance education has on 'pedagogy' and on the long term debate concerning (i) 'what is learning', (ii) 'how students learn' and (iii) educational or curriculum design.
Now a MOOC, and all forms of open education, including hybrid programs and distant learning in general are first and foremost institutional means of course delivery; they are institutionally determined, just as the classroom method or the conventional stand & deliver approach. Both (classroom and online) are the result of organisational approaches and decisions. Please refer to JISC Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design here > http://goo.gl/VMmxt), and see how media technologies are curriculum delivery tools (see JISC Curriculum Delivery through Technology here > http://goo.gl/KSZBA).
How can one manage existing institutional setups for Curriculum Design & Delivery and the academic (discipline) requirements that students and learners are to be faced with? For most part, it is argued that 'educational design' lies in a Student Workplan approach (or student activities in a given academic discipline).  Doing so, we may remember or recapture the meaning of learning as a deliberate (metacognitive) activity because that is what is expected from the participants | learners. And where this approach is institutionally adopted, developed and applied, there is no more teaching in the conventional sense, yet there is learning in a post-pedagogical mode.  
/HCh 
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GUSTAFSON, K.L. & BRANCH, R.M. 2002. Survey of instructional development models (4e). New York: ERIC, Syracuse University. (http://goo.gl/U9nDU) 
HOPMANN, S. 2007. Restrained teaching: the common core of Didaktik. European Educational Research Journal, vol.6, no.7:109-124. (http://goo.gl/V5aG4)  
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