Are new strategies needed for learning design services to have real impact?
Learning design in UK higher education has been on an interesting journey in recent years. It’s grown in popularity as a term, an activity, and as a moniker for roles that support learning & teaching activity.
The term, along with the role type associated with it; namely a learning designer, is one of the newer titles on the list of learning & teaching support roles in UK higher education. It is more contemporary than titles such as education developer, academic developer and learning technologist, arguably possessing greater cachet as a result.
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Learning Design for an age where old norms are fading away
“AI will revolutionise [insert sector here]” encapsulates the kind of rhetoric we've been hearing for a while. I'm not disputing AI's significant impact on higher education for a second. However, amidst the AI maelstrom, it's very easy to overlook other factors influencing higher education change.
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How do universities achieve learning design maturity?
The last few years have seen a growth in the number of learning design roles being created within universities and greater interest in learning design across higher education as a whole.
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What’s behind the growth and interest in learning design?
One of the most notable developments in higher education (HE) in recent years is both the growth of interest in the practice of learning design, and the creation of more learning design roles.
But why is it that learning design is being talked about much more and why do universities feel that they need more people to engage in this work?
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Data and learning: Does more = better?
There’s a valuable lesson here for anyone seeking to leverage data in digital and online learning, in that, the promise of data will never be truly realised if there isn’t skill to design the means of gathering relevant and useful information related to the learning process, and the conditions and capabilities of taking that information and doing something with it.
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5 tips for programme-level learning design
The effective design of programmes is so critical because if you get the fundamentals and foundations wrong you’ll be building on sand. There are too many instances of programmes that are disjointed collections of modules and in which holistic thought of how learning happens, develops and is supported through teaching, activities and assessment is sorely lacking.
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Is there a skills gap in learning design?
An expert Learning Designer is able to develop processes and continually draw upon conceptual models, theories and research to inform their approach. They are reflective and iterative and are able to effectively document and represent their design work. They are also able to engage supportively and creatively with educators, to question, influence, understand, empathise and design.
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5 tips for approaching video in online learning
Video can be a great medium and can serve different educational purposes, but there are also pitfalls with video. We can often unthinkingly default to video when other forms of communication might be better suited. There’s no simple answer to the question of when, where and whether you should use video and what form it should or can take. But there are plenty of things that can helpfully inform the judgement that’s needed for video or that can help you to avoid some common pitfalls.
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Are learner personas effective in learning design?
Personas certainly have the potential to be useful, but if we don’t think carefully about their relevance and usefulness to the domain of learning design and don’t fully understand what they’re there to do - there’s a danger of them becoming a hollow transposition, or a kind of vanity addition.
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Learning designers: New fad or new future?
The value of a learning designer role is not as another role type to plug into the academic, educational development/learning technologist space, but rather to work on a portfolio of specific programmes and courses. The learning designer role at its best is one that works as a close partner to teaching staff and teams in designing experiences and a context for learning to result.
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Balancing digital and analogue technologies in learning design
When we consider what technologies to use or recommend - too often we can unthinkingly choose digital technologies over other technologies, without a thoughtful process taking place. Now of course in some cases there are macro factors at play that govern and guide those discussions and decisions, but that’s not always the case.
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Should we rethink our use of time in higher education teaching and learning?
Have you ever considered, really considered, why we have fairly rigid time divisions for teaching? Who decided upon the unit of time of 1 hour, 2 hours or more and why? When you begin to consider this, you’ll struggle to find a rationale, deep reasons or evidence that substantiates this approach. It actually all feels completely arbitrary.
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