8.1 Learning design and open source teaching  (Page 8/18)

(5) One of the core theoretical concepts of Learning Design is that systems should attempt to be “pedagogically neutral” - that is, they should not support just one pedagogical approach (eg, problem based learning), but rather support a wide range of pedagogies depending on how an instructor designs their activities (NB: my own view on this is that it is impossible to be completely pedagogically neutral, as any system will have hidden commitments of one kind or another - rather, I see this as a crucial goal to aspire towards - the wider the range of possible approaches that are supported equally, the closer we are to achieving this goal).

I think this is an important principle, but in practice, I think most instructors want more than this - they want a flexible system together with advice and templates on “good practice” Learning Designs. So if I want to run a problem-based learning scenario with my class, I’d like a number of pre-built activity templates for problem based learning, and some advice on which one to choose, and how to edit the content to suit my discipline area. To me, this would be a very useful overlay to a Learning Design system, but it is worth noting that it goes beyond the concept of pedagogically neutrality. I think the field of Learning Design is now ready to take this step of having two layers - a generic design layer, and on top of this, a set of templates and advice for particular uses - but not all would share my views on this. In our own work on LAMS, we are working towards a first example of this kind of system (sometimes called a “pedagogic planner”) in the coming months, and there are two projects in the UK working on related concepts in this area. For an early mock-up of how this could look, see slides 18-22 at

(External Link)

The above is by no means an exhaustive list of barriers to the adoption of Learning Design, and they may not even be the most important. In particular, the slowest adoption of Learning Design, relative to general market size and innovation, is in the US, and this remains a mystery to me. I’d welcome comments on these or other suggested barriers from readers of these posts.

6. james dalziel - may 17th, 2007 at 10:03 pm

Ken asks why it would matter if others were making money from open content Learning Designs, so long as the wider educational benefits of their adoption was the outcome?

I won’t try to answer this for myself, as I am yet to resolve my own conflicting ideas on this, but let me try to comment generally on behalf of the educators with whom I’ve discussed this topic - I think there are two points:

(a) The spirit of sharing resources for non-commercial use runs strong in the education community - the idea certainly predates its codification in Creative Commons licenses, and I believe it is decades if not centuries old. But saying this does not mean commercial use is somehow the polar opposite, rather that commercial use tends to foster a much more mixed reaction among educators, and a tendency to debate pros and cons (sometimes vociferously). My sense is that the idea of non-commercial sharing *in and of itself* is widely accepted. So I think the choice of NC licenses should not be assumed to be an “anti-commercial” decision - rather, for many educators it is a statement of what is unproblematic as an up-front grant of rights (as compared to a different set of up-front rights that tends to provoke more mixed reactions).