When the Open University funded the Learning Design Initiative in 2007 they asked about 4 specific aspects of the topic: efficiency & effectiveness of time spent designing learning; ways to represent innovative practice; access and availability of quality support for designers; the true nature of a quality design as it appears or presents in practice. With the continued support of Jisc they’ve produced a range of tools. When the OULDI picked an open source code base on which to build a collaboration-friendly tool to visually represent “a learning design” they “…considered various drawing packages, as well as more specialised mind mapping tools (such as Inspiration and MindManager).
In the end we choose to use Compendium, a visual representation tool, originally developed for enabling group argumentation…” (OU Website).
Compendium was already the Open University’s home-grown product. They set about adapting it specifically to the requirements of learning design, and they named it CompendiumLD. Learning Design is and evolution of traditional and established “instructional design” that provides a more holistic approach (Conole, 2014). Their tool truly does offer a “…range of flexible approaches to the design process,” the interactive SVG to the right, if you’re able to see and use it, is only one example, a “Sequence Map View.” Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for graphics that supports interactivity and animation (Wikipedia). If you’re getting JavaScript alert popup message when you mouse over blame them, not me!
Learning Design emerged “as a counter measure to Instructional Design. Driven primarily by researchers in Europe and Australia, Learning Design aimed to provide practitioners with guidance and support to inform their design process which is pedagogically effective and makes appropriate use of technologies. It is seen as a more encompassing term than Instructional Design, which operates primarily at the level of multimedia; in contrast Learning Design provides a holistic approach to the design process.—Gráinne Colone, OULDI Project Lead (September 2008 – August 2011)
On the CompendiumLD corner of the Open University’s site you can also see a “Learning Outcomes View,” and a “Task Times View,” showing how you can use CompendiumLD to deliver timed assessments. For more advanced examples, see this Peer assessment using a wiki., or an example Modelling adaptations featuring open educational resources, “a design which shows how existing open educational resources can be included in an activity structure that caters for learners with different levels of skills and knowledge” created with a perhaps somewhat dated (<frameset>, <script Language="JavaScript1.2">) but nevertheless reliable and robust1 Web Export functionality that lets you share your designs with collaborators and other learners.
If there’s anything “wrong” with Compendium and CompendiumLD, you see it in these screen shots… is it perhaps a somewhat 90s, or turn-of-the-21st-century look to the icons? Never mind! Don’t let that distract you from what you can do with CompendiumLD. If it still bothers you, you can in fact change the images, icons and stencil sets, and it’s source is freely available — if you’d like to work on the interface the community will likely be grateful. Just look at CompendiumNG if you’ve any doubts there’s a next generation coming up in the Compendium family.
As part of the JISC Curriculum Design project (OULDI_JISC), four other [higher education] institutions (Brunel, Cambridge, London South Bank and Reading Universities) have been trialing and exploring the use of the OU learning design methodology. The purpose of these pilots is to determine the transferability of the OU methodology across a range of different HE organisations. In addition the pilots will provide the project with valuable feedback about the tools and resources developed as part of the OULDI-JISC project, and the approaches we have used to introduce and embed the methodologies institutionally (workshops, special interest groups and the toolbox etc). These Universities previously worked together as a cluster group for the HEA Pathfinder Project, on which Gráinne Conole was critical friend and it is expected that this work will build on, and extend on, that project.
I’ve had a strong sense of the value of these tools—and of the entire paradigm surrounding their development2 and use that seems to me so well-aligned with the long-established findings of cognitive apprenticeship—since they first came to my attention only a couple years ago. I’m truly excited to see their work expand and continue.
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Further reading
Conole, Gráinne (2014) Reviewing the trajectories of e-learning, blogged chapter from forthcoming publication. Or start with my shorter overview
The Open University Learning Design Initiative “Our aim is to develop and implement a methodology for learning design composed of tools, practice and other innovation that both builds upon, and contributes to, existing academic and practitioner research. We have been working across several OU faculties and with 4 other universities to pilot curriculum design activities and relevant supporting tools and to contribute to the broader academic work in the subject.”
Jisc, “UK’s expert on digital technologies for education and research”
Fouchaux, Richard C. (2013), Thick learning situations: paths towards a framework for 21st-century learning design, project, paper and various web applications [HTML]
[…demonstrating, if not quite explaining, its own subthesis—the impending obsolescence of the traditional paper—and the work left to be done in utilizing new forms, and raising them to the status of other literacies! My MRP, the birth of this site. -rcf].
- By comparison, I discovered Visual Understanding Environment (VUE), a similar tool from Tufts University, has advanced as far as image maps enhanced with an early version of jQuery, but I found it very easy to break by putting HTML or the wrong text characters into the Node Notes.
- Back in 2011 I tried to say it in 10 seconds, but it took me 11, and maybe it’s not entirely clear I’m talking about the same issues. What do you think? [video]
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