Free webinar on phases of Merrill's task-centered #MOOC design #EUMoocs

On 10 March 2016, from 14 - 15 CET (to find your timezone equivalent, look here) the EMMA consortium offers a free webinar on an interactive MOOC design; following Merrill's task-centered MOOC approach. You can find more information on the webinar here, and more information on Merrill's instructional design here. 

This one hour webinar is intended for people willing to improve the pedagogical design of MOOCs. Often MOOCs tend to follow an instructivist approach where learners are mostly expected to acquire and remember the knowledge presented by the teacher. This webinar will guide participants through the phases of Merrill’s task-centered instructional design model. We will show how the model can be applied to MOOC design for engaging learners in active and collaborative knowledge construction through meaningful and practical assignments. Opportunities that task-centered MOOC design offers and challenges that need to be considered will be discussed.

You can register here (for free), and there will be two speakers: 

Mart Laanpere, Institute of digital Technologies, Tallinn University, Estonia
Mart Laanpere received the degree in educational technology (M. Sc) from the University of Twente, the Netherlands and Ph.D. degree in educational science from the Tallinn University. Mart is an experienced lecturer, trainer and a researcher in the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning. He is a co-founder of the Centre for Educational Technology in Tallinn University. Currently he is coordinating the ERA Chair project CEITER (ceiter.tlu.ee). His research interests are related with designing innovative online learning environments, school-level educational innovation, instructional design, learning analytics, assessment of digital competences and supporting professional development of teachers with e-portfolio. He has been the convenor of EERA network on Open Learning and an contributing to e-learning development in various countries, such as Georgia, Moldova, Palestine, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Senegal, Croatia and Serbia. Mart is a member of the steering group of the Estonian Strategy for Lifelong Learning 2015 – 2020.

Olga Firssova, WELTEN Institute, The Netherlands
Dr. Olga Firssova is Assistant professor at WELTEN Institute, Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology, Open University Netherlands. Firssova has been involved in course and curriculum design, quality assurance and evaluation projects at the OU for 10 years and has been teaching various courses at the Master of Educational Science program. Research interests and areas of expertise include course and curriculum design, academic writing and design for inquiry-based learning with technologies. Knowledge construction in Massive Online courses is her new research interest. Currently Olga is involved in two European projects: weSPOT (working environment for inquiry-based learning) and EMMA (European Multiple MOOC Aggregator).

#AdaLovelaceDay in search of the extended learning body

Most of the people who are passionate about computing know Ada Lovelace. Born 200 years ago (1815) her family background provided a mix of poetry (father) and mathematics (mother). An interesting mix, and I feel a necessary mix for great achievers. Being able to feel the dream-state of creativity, allows a different interpretation of the material, realistic world. I truly believe that there is no great invention without great creative vision, and to me Ada Lovelace had both traits which resulted in a magnificent addition to history, even today. There is a lovely FindingAda blog which celebrates the achievements of women in STEM. And today I loved reading the 40 years in tech FutureLearn blogpost by Shirley Williams.

Ada extending the machine

Going against the odds is not an easy thing. Anyone who is slightly different understands the impact of not being part of the norm. Ada must have known and felt it herself. Nevertheless, she had one big advantage, her interests paralleling passion that she could find close by, she had access to an incredibly professional learning network (admittedly, that would have been a very physical, face-to-face network at the time). It was Ada herself who described her scientific thoughts as ‘poetical science’. But what did she do? Ada managed to translate the operations of a machine, the Analytical Engine. She literally translated the Italian description of the analytical engine, but added her own notes to it: “Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with notes fromthe translator". These notes are the blueprint of computer programming, and moved the machine beyond its mere materialistic capacity, towards a new use. It is this that has fascinated me about Ada (and more people with similar poetic scientific passion).  

Within this day and age STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) is of course still very important (history tends to have waves of interest, so STEM is bound to become less important in future historical era’s). And I love the fact that STEM is stimulated from a gender perspective. But it does make me think about what I feel we are missing, when thinking about Ada Lovelace?

The dysfunctional extended learning body

The best action movies are those where the actor/actress has to come up with new solutions ad hoc. A bit of MacGyver or the A-team… but with more women as heroes. This is what seems to be missing with a lot of algorithms. This: what if we hit a brick wall? Where do we turn next.... That is what I would love to see: more algorithms that can multi-iterate solutions.  The reason why is because of the current dysfunctional learning body I have to live with in my digital world. I would love to see my digital, extended body to be equipped with a more solid network of solutions, allowing me to stay ‘in the flow’ when I am learning. I am looking for the new Ada that solves STEM affordances, translates them ready for use in our extended, learning body.

No matter what I do, I always seem to hit the brick wall of affordances multiple times. Even the more mature technologies can cut me off unexpectedly. Three days ago I was typing along, coding various data sets using DeDoose cloud software to code qualitative data.

Suddenly I felt like my arms dropped off. Physically they did not really disappear, but it felt that way. I was using the internet, wanting to search for something and … the connection broke. I felt like being at a library and suddenly losing the ability to use my arms. I know the library has the books I need (the internets), I even remember what isle to go to (structured search engines)… but I cannot reach them myself. So I did the only thing I could do… stare and hope for my digital arms to reappear again. I had similar experiences when exploring mobile learning, or using mobiles for learning, in the past. Or building mobile apps to be able to connect with digital, cloud-or-file-based content.

Of course coping with an extended, digital body means that multiple factors need to be part of any problem-solving algorithm: time management, what we mean with ‘flow of learning’, what provides the best possible experience of ‘learning flow’ (is it rather staying connected (for instance having an offline library that can step in with some bits when internet fails) or is it working with some sort of latency which can bridge failures in connectivity? Or anything that we can come up with.).

What affordances do we feel as useful? The first PDA was build based on real life experiences of its inventor walking around with a log. Affordances are in many cases ‘that what we find logical, or natural’, but it could be that what we find natural is not natural at all, simply something that works best given its realistic boundaries. What feels natural is not always transparent.

What would Ada do?

What kind of notes would Ada Lovelace add to a description of the extended learning body that we know have? Using social media, multiple (mobile) devices, connecting with people, learning in both formal and informal ways, moving towards an unknown professional future….? What would she come up with? Where does it leave me? How much of an Ada would I like to be (given my own personal boundaries and passions)… Where do we all see each other?

New ADL #mLearning Design Reference model: adjust to your needs

Peter Berking who is the lead of the MOTIF project just released the core slide deck for the newly adapted mLearning Design Reference model, and is now inviting us all to have a look at the reference model, and adapt it to our own needs. If we do have adaptations, Peter would love to hear about it, in order to add an extra layer of understanding to the model, coming from all of us practitioners.

The slide deck is protected under a Creative Commons "Attribution-nonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license"
Purpose: "From MoTIF project research, the learning community identified a need for instructional design processes optimized for the mobile platform that could most effectively inform, situate, and invite consideration of the new mobile learning approaches, device capabilities and usage patterns. This reference model is intended to address the need to inform, situate, and invite consideration of effective and innovative mobile learning approaches through following a mobile-optimized learning design process. As a reference model, it is an integration of existing theoretical and practical models rather than an original model. It has been developed through an open process via a community-based working group."

The MOTIF project has been running for a few years now, and the reports of each stage can be downloaded from the MOTIF site (you do need to create an account, with a nice guarantee that while logging in, your data - including contacts - will not be copied or used in anyway).

The slide deck is quite big (238 slides), but it is a 'work deck', which is filled with flow charts, performance support, design elements, conducting an instructional analysis, analysing learners and contexts, develop assessment instruments ... and it all starts out from the needs and goals that you want to achieve with your mLearning project. It is a really useful slide deck. I only went through it at this point, but I am going to try it out on a project soon, trying to figure out what I would adjust to make the reference model fit my own context and need/s. The slides are also set up to enable you to immediately click to extra information on the subject of that specific slide... nice.

The referred to frameworks are also of interest (Koole, with the FRAME framework, and - one I really like at this point in time: the champions framework). 

#Mobile phones to help women empower themselves #gender

In the last years my focus was moving more towards mobile content then mobile design. But indeed as Ronda Zelezny-Green mentioned in her blogpost, the user design can make the difference in getting people, and specifically women increasingly into mobile use for learning. The technology has some affordances that can be improved for specific populations, addressing specific issues. In the case of Ronda, she points towards the Jokko initiative, tackling literacy. But indeed, there are other groups that might benefit from simplified, design specific mobile phones. Whether this specialized mobile design would be tackled on the operating system level, or based on a set of mobile apps that rearrange the actual design of the phone needs to be studied by experts in those areas. Nevertheless, I am all in favor of being able to tweak a phone in such a way that specific learner groups can be addressed in an improved way.

There might be a mobile market for more of these user-focused design initiatives: people who are impaired (adapted to impairment), people with specific chronic diseases (immediate health relevance based on sensors available, log book options), sports people (more stats and evolution's , geeks (transparent tech details of any kind)... But of course this type of design can only work if it is build in participation with the user group it wants to target, which inevitably takes more time because more iterations are necessary but still, it looks like a market to me. 

Free course on Learning Design #MOOC #oldsmooc

Open Learning Design Studio, a free and open course on learning design (how learning can be designed, how a curriculum can be build...)! That is something I cannot resist. Admittedly, the organizers are still getting all the locations and spaces ready, but there is a lot to be seen already.

Starting on 10 January 2013 (and lasts for 9 weeks, clocking off on 13 March 2013) a set of UK based learning institutes are rolling out a MOOC on learning design. Although the course is free, you do need to register.

They offer a list of new approaches to MOOC (and proven one's), which will make it of interest not only to us who look for a more in-depth knowledge into learning design, but also for those contemplating on setting up a MOOC.

What I like already:

• Oldsmooc is using different online environments
• At point of registration the registering participants are asked some relevant questions (type of learner, experience with online learning/learning design, ...)
• they provide badges, embedded in parts of the learning environment
• the fact that they start on a Thursday (leaving the weekend as work time for those in full time jobs)
• visible resources
• they have asked Martin Hawkey to strengthen their analytic approach
• ... 
• and I can just relax and learn, not having to worry about anything else... ahhhhhhh

So that simply looks great already!

A bit on the course (from their course site):

Study weeks start on a Thursday to allow those who cannot devote time during work days to participate over the weekend. The MOOC takes an active and collaborative approach to learning. Facilitators will provide resources and guidance, and participants are invited to critically engage with and add to these, and use them to create design artifacts that they will share and discuss with others. Committed participants will work individually or in groups on a learning/ curriculum design project that they will initiate and define. Additionally these participants will associate themselves with a study group, with which they will work throughout the MOOC. These groups will act as the primary learning support mechanism.

The course is structured to reflect a proposed process for design, and combines a number of design thinking methodologies (see http://www.ld-grid.org/resources/methods-and-methodologies/ideo-toolkit and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking), inquiry learning (see http://www.pi-project.ac.uk/) and educational design research (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design-based_research).

Drawing up an #mLearning #strategy in 10 steps

Everyone is joining mLearning, but in many cases some of the basic steps are missing. Looking at my own mLearning roll out, I now see much more elements that will support a good and strong adaption and roll out of any mobile project.

Here are 10 steps that make up my own mLearning strategy if I want to work on a new project, if you have additions, please add them via comment or social media:

The 5 core steps are similar to any TELearning environment

1. What is the goal of the mLearning project?
Is it to develop a course? Is it to get knowledge disseminated? Is it to get your experiences shared with others in your learning network? The goal of a project must be made as clear as possible before setting up anything else, as the goal will shape what you will need and how you can built it most effectively to reach that goal.

2. Get all the stakeholders involved
Participation and support by all is essential for any learning to take place. With relevant stakeholder representatives chances increase that the learning environment that is build will be accepted by the majority and as such will be used. All stakeholders must feel comfortable with the new training project, otherwise you risk one group dropping out. The earlier you get feedback from all stakeholder groups, the more tailored the learning environment can be.

3. What are your planned learner dynamics
Peer-to-peer – e.g. engineers or tech students jotting down quick repairs they did for particular cases and sharing those solutions, while also providing feedback on others, or one-to-many: the specialist or expert sharing her/his ideas with others to get them up to speed on new innovations, knowledge, changes…. The learner dynamics will have a profound impact on the overall design of the learning environment or course architecture and the tools you will use to design the learning environment.

4. What is the (mobile) infrastructure like in the target area you will be rolling out your project?
If you will work in a rural area with scattered mobile coverage (mountainous area, desert…) , you need to take a wiki hotspot into consideration to disseminate learning content. If you are working in a well-covered mobile area, you might still have problems with electricity (certain areas of Africa) which has an effect on the solutions you will provide for the learners (solar panels, rechargeable battery set).

5. What is the mobile situation for your target audience?
Do all of them have a mobile device? Are they familiar with the more advanced options on their mobile devices? What is the payment plan for accessing mobile internet/sms/mms… What is their financial situation? Knowing all of these criteria will allow you to provide mobile solutions that are in synch with the possibilities and experiences of your target audience.
Not adding too much new tech stuff will provide a more balanced, less frightening learning environment for any target audience (well, except geeks, they love tech challenges for the most part).

Knowing the above steps, you can get more practical:

6. Security can be an issue
What is the security you need to deliver your mLearning content or design your mLearning project? This will affect your design in open (Cloud) or closed (behind firewalls, more secluded…). It also affects the devices that will be designed for. Because the more devices you want to address, the more difficult it will be to keep a secure overview and develop/deliver secure content.

7. What will be the core devices you will cater for? BYOD or not?
Depending on the security options you can opt for one type of mobile device, or you can go for the concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), which is all the rave right now. But if you opt for BYOD it results in a more complex, yet at the same time more standardized set of options to deliver your mLearning content. Choosing one type of mobile device will allow you to search for just one authoring tool or content building option. If you choose for BYOD, you might want to consider some programming, or at least design your content following html5/CSS (a free course can be found at W3C making sure you get the standards of html5 right from the start). If you will not work with multimedia files, simple html/CSS will do also, keep it as simple as possible. Yes, KISS.

8. How will you design the content? Authoring tools or programming or social media?
Knowing the devices you will be catering for, you can now tackle the design. You can go for available authoring tools that deliver both mobile and web-based content, or you can opt for programming (either in different mobile programming languages or delivering content that is designed via SDK (Software Development Kits) that are made available for a variety of mobile device types. If you use peer-to-peer content, you will need to allow your learners to create content that can be shared. In that case it is worthwhile to consider social media locations for your content spaces. Most of the social media tools offer mobile options and they are made specifically for sharing/writing content as well.

9. Strategies your mobile content delivery
Make sure you have a strategy for the content delivery. Will content be delivered via wifi downloads (only downloadable via wifi), will it be delivered via mobile internet download (in that case make the content bite size, otherwise it will take forever to download and … it will cost a fortune).

If you are setting up peer-to-peer course parts, it is important to make communication as easy as possible. For example you can use e-mail access to communicate via discussion boards or tweet updates.

10. What is a mLearning content user allowed to do?

Guidelines for the users are always important to keep everyone happy. Make sure you provide clear guidelines for the content you provide. How can they communicate with each other (or with the facilitator/teacher/trainer). Can they deliver the content to other people (is there an intellectual copyright?). Can they provide their access codes to others? Can they remix the content and use it in their own courses? How must your learners add content to the course (if they are requested to do so): in writing, pictures, movies…  and how must this content be delivered?

This is what I come up with, but feel free to add any ideas or strategies you use to optimize your mLearning project. Collaboration is always more fun, and rewarding.

#Mobile design webcasts by @bdconf

Breaking development is organizing a variety of mobile conferences and webinars and as I was going through their September 2011 mobile webcasts, some of the videos got my attention. Great stuff. Here are the two webinars that I found very interesting, but there are 18 (!) videos on mobile design, and each of them have key ideas that affect learning with mobile devices.

The presentation by Stephanie Rieger explores how our use, and perception of mobile devices is changing, and how these changes may impact how we should design for them going forward. The nice thing about her 1 hour presentation is that she connects mobiles to our contemporary society (banks, revolutions, how data moves all around us...). Stephanie also stresses the importance of being simple when any of us wants to share our own content/data... so flexible, light weight websites are the way to go with m-design. Progressive development is another key point in her speech, as the user will decide what they find is the 'best' thing, so let the people choose their own meaningful enhancement (nice approach, a bit of crowd-sourcing approach for m-design). Different sites for different data space, bringing it together as patterns. "Create the best experience for all the audiences"

Breaking Development April 2011: Beyond the Mobile Web from Breaking Development on Vimeo.

Another webinar that got my attention was the presentation by Stephen Hay on Responsive mobile design. Responsive design is a hot topic, as he talks about fluid grids (grids that go in and out depending on how big the viewport is) and media queries (feature detection of a device), combining these two is responsive design. Stephen explains responsive design in a pleasant, humorous way. Referring to Paul Rand who said that design is putting form and content together. He also refers to progressive enhancement and the similar discussions that appear in m-design and who were discussed a decade ago when discussing computer web-design. He then goes on showing some coding examples for m-design.

Breaking Development April 2011: Real World Responsive Design from Breaking Development on Vimeo.