Research contents
Learning objects and learning design
Learning interaction and networked communities
Informal eLearning
Funded projects

A User-oriented Planner for Learning Analysis and Design

This project was funded by JISC through its Design for Learning Programme. The project was led by the Institute of Education (London Knowledge Lab) by Professor Diana Laurillard. It was originally funded for 10 months, but was extended for a further 12 months, ending in February 2008.

The result of the project is the 'London Pedagogy Planner'. The London Pedagogy Planner (LPP) is a prototype for a collaborative online planning and design tool that supports lecturers in analysing, developing and sharing learning designs. LPP is based on a developing model of the components involved in learning design (e.g. learning outcomes, topics, teaching methods), and the critical relationships between them. As a decision tool, it makes the pedagogical design explicit as an output from the process, capturing it for testing, redesign, reuse and adaptation by the originator, or by others.

The aims of the project were to:

1. support lecturers in HE and FE in the diagnostic process of identifying learner needs, designing learning activities, and assessing learning outcomes;
2. enable effective and innovative use of learning technologies within existing institutional contexts;
3. understand the requirements of the academic community who wish to build and share pedagogically innovative materials.

The project has attempted to meet these aims by exploiting the opportunities offered by digital technology to develop a Pedagogy Planner with practitioners.

The LPP project has reviewed and identified several ways of representing learning designs, and the decision-making process, in the form a support tool. We have adopted an iterative user-oriented approach to collecting development requirements in order to embrace the different approaches teachers use to think about learning designs. The development of the learning design support prototype incorporates the following features:

• planning at different levels of granularity – activity, session, module, programme;
• customisation of terminologies to adapt to local institutional requirements;
• consideration of teacher time and learner time as significant parameters for learning design;
• updating of information in all stages after changes made in any one stage;
• externalising decisions made in designing through visual representations.

A Java prototype for module planning has been implemented at a basic level of functionality. A version of this prototype is now available for users to trial at: http://code.google.com/p/londonpedagogyplanner/downloads/list

A screen from the LPP prototype

The form of the tool is generated from theoretical design frameworks, such as the Conversational Framework, from interviews with lecturers from partner institutions about their approaches to learning design, and from observation and discussion at user workshops, at different stages of the prototype development. The evaluation was further supplemented by workshop feedback sheets, and questionnaire feedback from JISC workshops.

“It encourages thinking outside current teaching boxes and therefore encourages [the use of] other methods.”
      User feedback from London Met lecturer

Throughout the second phase of the project (March 2007 to February 2008), we have been in contact with the Phoebe Planner Project (from Oxford University), with a view to cross-linking the two tools. We are aiming towards integration of the Phoebe Planner and LPP, to build a more comprehensive online collaborative learning design system.

Selected publications:

Laurillard, D. (2008) ‘The teacher as action researcher: Using technology to capture pedagogic form’, Studies in Higher Education, 33( 2), forthcoming.

San Diego, J. P., Laurillard, D., Boyle, T., Bradley, C., Ljubojevic, D., Neumann, T., & Pearce, D. (2008). Towards an analytical approach to learning design. ALT-J, 16 (1), 15-29.

Laurillard, D. (2007) ‘Modelling benefits-oriented costs for technology enhanced learning’. Higher Education, 54, 21-39.

Project website: http://www.wle.org.uk/d4l/

Contact details

Professor Tom Boyle
Learning Technology Research Institute
London Metropolitan University
35 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8AA
Email: t.boyle@londonmet.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)207 749 3757
Fax: +44 (0)207 749 3781
WWW: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ltri

Last updated 21 December, 2010