If I were to be completely honest, I didn’t really “get” the project for the Learning Design course until, well…the evening of March 29 today.
Somehow, I just really (really) struggled with putting together the WHAT IT IS of learning design. I had never heard of it before; it has never been a part of any conversation with colleagues; it has not been mentioned in any of the (gads and gads) of informational/advertising emails for professional development opportunities; and, unfortunately, I simply did not put together all the pieces of the course in a way which crystallized into an “aha” moment until I stumbled across Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age : designing for 21st century learning (Beetham & Sharpe, 2013) — specifically, Appendix 5, which provided a checklist “…to support staff through the learning activity design process” (p.596).
Having read through the checklist, and still feeling somewhat overwhelmed, I reached out to my sister-in-law who has previously completed a master’s program. It was in describing the assignment requirements to her that my brain finally made a connection: the checklist was, essentially, a step-by-step guide that fulfilled the very purpose of the assignment. It was the impetus I needed to be able to move forward with writing the design document, and I was grateful to have had that breakthrough.
Despite the fact that within our class sessions we discussed readings relating to theories of learning, frameworks for teaching and learning, taxonomies for assessments, open educational resources, etc., I saw these as disparate and did not — even close to remotely — comprehend that they fit together under the umbrella of a field of study called Learning Design.
As I write this blog post, I find that I’m still putting the pieces together on this whole “Learning Design” concept, which means I’ve spent quite a lot of my day reading literature. Thankfully, this has been rather a productive endeavour! Of especial help to me was this insight, which distills the trouble I had grasping the intent of this entire course: “Educators often use ‘Learning Design’ to talk about their everyday decisions about how they teach, in the sense of ‘how do I design activities to help my learners to learn?’ This is Learning Design as a practice—a verb—rather than as a static concept—a noun to describe a field of study. It is Learning Design as ‘designing for learning'” (Dalziel, 2015). Mine was the first understanding; the dawning realization that our course was entirely about the second one only began a mere six days ago. All the little bits and pieces of insight and understanding that I’ve picked up in the interim finally coalesced in an “oooooooh…. So that’s what I’ve been missing” manner when I stumbled over this concept map of Learning Design:
Unfortunately, these revelations did not all occur prior to the submission of our project assignment. Fortunately, I get to practice a growth mindset and comfort myself with the inner monologue: “Well then. Next time I need to plan a learning activity, I will have so much more of a clue on how to make use of Learning Design to guide me!”
Whew. I’m so glad I didn’t miss the boat entirely.
Beetham, H., & Sharpe, R. (Eds.). (2013). Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age Designing for 21st Century Learning (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203078952-14
Dalziel, J. (Ed.). (2015). Learning Design: Conceptualizing a Framework for Teaching and Learning Online (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315693101
Feature image Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash
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