how to design collaborative learning activities

http://www.metis-project.org/

A hands-on workshop exploring tools and techniques for designing successful online collaborative learning activities

http://www.mentis-project.org/

How to design Collaborative learning activities




• Context• Today’s activities• Tools and techniques to support you• Your knowledge

Our knowledge as facilitators

“Learning design is the act of devising new practices, plans of activity, resources and tools aimed at achieving particular educational aims in a given situation” (METIS project, 2012)

Your goal: to design a collaborative online activity that will form part of a module

A1: Introduction

A1: Metis project

Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche

3 contexts

HEVocational TrainingNon-formal training

Learning design expertise

• Design is ‘concerned with how things ought to be, with devising artifacts to attain goals’ (Simon, 1996, p. 114) and

• Design: ‘creating new artefacts of good quality’vs.

• Craft: ‘creating artefacts of good quality’ (Mor, Y., Craft, B., & Hernández-Leo, D. 2013)

Simon, H. A. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.Mor, Y., Craft, B., & Hernández-Leo, D. (2013). The art and science of learning design. Research in Learning Technology, 21(22513). doi: 10.3402/rlt.v21i0.22513

A1: Learning design

Two strands

1. How to represent teaching practice from a technical perspective in the development and delivery of online learning environments; and

2. how to represent teaching practice in an appropriate form to enable teachers to share ideas about innovative online pedagogy and think about the process of design.

Agostinho, S., Bennett, S., Lockyer, L., & Harper, B. (2011). The future of learning design. Learning, Media and Technology, 36(2), 97-99. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2011.553619

A1: Learning design

Learning design at the OUA1: Background

A1: Overview of today’s activities

Conceptualize / Re-conceptualize

AuthorImplement

Introduction

Investigate / Re-investigate

Evaluate

Produce a prototype: a detailed, formal and reusable definition of a learning design

Apply an authored learning design using a specific VLE, a particular group of students and set of tools

Work on/with ideas for design, e.g. creation of representations of design elements and their interconnections, understanding of the context and expected users

• Conceptualize• Author• Implement

Integrated Learning Design Environment http://ilde.upf.edu

A1: METIS tools

• The ILDE is located here http://ilde.upf.edu/ou– Login using username and password emailed to you

• When you upload resources, please tag them with the name of your group, i.e. use one of:

»hsc»mct»oubs»science

A1: Using ILDE

Activity

Learningoutcome

Tool

Resource

Learner’s work

A1: Paper prototyping tools

1. Individually, write down 3 (or more ways) to ensure that an activity you are designing will fail!. Write each on an individual Post-Its (5 minutes);

2. As a team, place all your Post-Its on a sheet of A1 paper and structure them in a way that seems useful (e.g. by themes or arrange into a map) (10 minutes);

3. Make your representation of ways to ‘ruin a collaborative learning activity’ available to the other teams by taking a picture and uploading it to the ILDE (remember to tag it with the name of your team), and by affixing your sheet to the wall nearest you using blu-tack. (5 minutes).

ILDE rich text editor

A2: How to ruin a collaborative learning activity (20 minutes)

What are the barriers and challenges of collaborative learning from a learner’s perspective?


• Technical challenges?• Motivational challenges? • Temporal challenges?• Other challenges and barriers?

Personas

A3: Barriers and challenges (40 minutes)

Pick 2 student personas each.

1. Individually, write down up to 4 barriers or challenges to collaborative learning—from a learner’s perspective—for your particular teaching and learning context. Write each barrier/challenge on a separate green post-it. (5 minutes)

2. Collaborate with the others on your team by placing your Post-Its on an A1 page. Collaborate to arrange them in some order or map. From the map identify guidelines or heuristics that you believe a successful collaborative learning activity should follow. Write these heuristics on yellow Post-Its. (15 minutes)

3. Present map to the workshop. Your team will have about 4 minutes to make its present. (20 minutes)

4. Make your map available to other teams by displaying it and by taking a photo of it and uploading it to the ILDE.

ILDE rich text editor Personas

A3: Barriers and challenges (40 minutes)

• Describe your vision for a collaborative learning activity.

• Focus on describing the effects the activity is intended to have on the learners.

A4: Conceptualize learning outcomes (30 minutes)

The Learning Outcomes view is a notational view which shows how the learning activities and assessment tasks are aligned with the intended learning outcomes of the course or module. The view is informed by Biggs’ work on Constructive Alignment (Biggs, 1999). The premise behind this model is twofold: • Students construct meaning from

what they do to learn• The teacher aligns the planned

learning activities with the learning outcomes

Biggs, J. (1999). What the Student Does: teaching for enhanced learning. Higher Education Research & Development, 18(1), 57-75. doi: 10.1080/0729436990180105

A4: Learning Outcomes View

• Describe your vision for a collaborative learning activity. Focus on describing the effects the activity is intended to have on the learners.

Learning outcomes view

1. Listen to the introduction to the Learning Outcomes View and this activity (2 minutes)

2. As individuals, each write down one or more learning outcomes for a collaborative learning activity, each on a separate Learning Outcome post-it. Use the supplied verbs! (3 minutes)

3. As a team, collaborate to choose and refine one or more learning outcomes that your activity will produce (10 minutes)

4. As individuals, each write down one or more outputs a learner could produce to show that they have reached one or more of these outcomes. Use a separate Learner Output post-it for each output. (5 minutes)

5. As a team, collaborate to choose and refine the definition of the learner outputs (10 minutes)

6. As a team, collaborate to produce a Learning Outcomes View showing the relationships between learners' outputs and learning outcomes. Upload to the ILDE and display it (10 minutes)


• Describe your vision for a collaborative learning activity. Focus on describing the effects the activity is intended to have on the learners.

Learning outcomes view

Learning outcome verbs and phrases particularly relevant to collaboration

analyse, build on, co-create, contribute, debate with, discuss with, engage with, enhance,

improve on, motivate, perform, share

……..and any others you can think of


• Listen to the case studies of collaborative learning activities and patterns (15 minutes)

• Working individually and as a team select features of the patterns and case studies that are applicable to the Learning Outcomes view you created in activity 4. (30 minutes)


A5: Evidence and examples of collaborative learning (45minutes)

1. Listen to presentation about the case study (15 minutes)

2. As individuals, think about which features of the examples and patterns could be applied to your teaching context and used to support your learners reach the learning outcomes you specified in Activity 4 “Conceptualize: Learning outcomes”.• Keep in mind the heuristics, barriers, challenges and ways to ruin

an activity you identified earlier.• Pick one or more of the patterns or case studies, and for your

chosen one(s) write down “pros” on green Post-Its, and “cons” on red Post-Its and attach them to the relevant print out. (5 minutes);



3. As a team, use the annotated print outs as prompts to discuss and agree on features of the patterns and examples that you can reuse. (Nominate a note taker to create a list of the pros and cons and other features you think will be useful in the ILDE) (15 minutes)

4. Using the ILDE, the note taker will create a rich text document describing these pros, cons and features and tag it with their team’s name. To create a rich text document use the menu.• NewLdS->Conceptualize-> For other conceptualizations.• The other team members should check and advise on the content of the

document as it is being created (10 minutes).



Things to think about include:• Which parts of the activity should be synchronous, and which should be

asynchronous?• Which tools have the right affordances for your activity?

A6: Conceptualize: Storyboard (45 minutes)

• A prototype is a way of demonstrating how a design will work. Not the final product, but enough to clarify the functionality and technical issues for meeting the user requirements.

• Author: Use WebCollage to produce a detailed, formal and reusable prototype of a learning design

(by Daniel Y. Go) (by Zach Hoeken)

WebCollage

A7: Author - using WebCollage (75 minutes)

A7: Author (75 minutes)1. Listen to the introduction to WebCollage (10 minutes);

This introduction will use a prototype for an online version of a face-to-face activity “Intervention and Reframing: Using Diagrammatic Thinking ” to show you features of WebCollage.

2. Given that there is limited time available for this activity, you may want to select a portion of your storyboard to author – the facilitators will help you with this. (5 minutes);

3. Discuss and agree role to be played by each team member (use the role cards). (5 minutes);

4. Use WebCollage to select the pattern that is most relevant to the storyboard. (5 minutes);

5. Customise the pattern to produce the first stage authored sequence. User of WebCollage thinks-aloud during creation while other participants feed in suggestions based on role. (40 minutes);

6. Note any issues related to your roles in a rich text document. To create a rich text document use the menu.New LdS->Conceptualize->For other conceptualizations (remember to tag it with the name of your team) (5 minutes); &

7. Finalise the WebCollage prototype for presentation. (10 minutes)

• WebCollage instructions

ILDE guidance

WebCollage

A7: Author (75 minutes)

ILDE guidance GLUE!-PS

A8: Implement your activity in a VLE (30 minutes)

1. Listen to the introduction to GluePS. (10 minutes);2. The facilitators will elect one of the prototypes and show

how it can be converted to a runnable activity in Moodle. (15 minutes) (If there is time, facilitators will support other teams to complete conversions of their designs.);

3. The facilitators will review the ways in which the Moodle implementation can be refined in WebCollage or other tools. (5 minutes).

Heuristic evaluation originates in usability research, as a technique for early formative evaluation of digital systems. A team of experts is asked to assess a particular design using a given set of heuristics or “rules of thumb”.

• a low-fidelity rapid evaluation which often uncovers design flaws at an early stage.

• a group of experts “walk through” the evaluated system as if they were users (learners) engaged in a typical activity.

• The experts use a set of design heuristics - “rules of thumb” against which they are asked to assess their experience.

A9: Heuristic evaluation (45 minutes)

Heuristic evaluation guidance Heuristic evaluation template

Other team’s design Other team’s checklist

1. As a team, select a view or representation of your design that summarises its features. For example, you could choose WebCollage’s ‘Summary View’, or your Storyboard (5 minutes);

2. Make your chosen representation available to another team, i.e. display the selected ILDE view on your team’s monitor or display the storyboard (5 minutes);

3. As a team, carry out a heuristic evaluation of the design you have been given using the heuristics provided. Bear in mind all the ‘Ways to ruin a collaborative learning activity’ and the ‘Barriers and challenges’ identified in this workshop. Your team’s note taker should create a document summarising your findings. To create To create a document to record your findings use the menu:. (15 minutes)• New LdS->Conceptualize->Heuristic Evaluation (title it “Evaluation of <team

name>’s deign” and remember to tag it with the name of your own team); • Each team will present its evaluation to the workshop participants and facilitators

(you will only have about 4 minutes per team, so lead with the most important points) (20 minutes)

A9: Heuristic evaluation (45 minutes)

A10: Wrap up & complete workshop evaluation (30 minutes)

http://www.itd.cnr.it/Metis/questionnaire.html




A10: Evaluation


(Photo by Daniel Slaughter)

Slides put together by Andrew Brasher, with help from Patrick McAndrew, Yishay Mor, Christopher Walsh, Rebecca Galley, Simon Cross

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielslaughter/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielslaughter/

How to design online collaborative learning activities