Newsletter - December 2024
I can’t quite believe that we have nearly arrived to the end of another term. It’s nearly Christmas. Where did that time go? If I look back across the last four months, then I do realise a lot has been going on. I’ve worked in the background for various webinars by CODE and supported SEDA’s Autumn conference, I’ve taught on the PGCert at the University of London (just starting another round of marking), worked with King’s College London on a learning technology project, and worked on a few other bits and pieces. It’s been a packed Autumn term!
I can tell my broadband provider has had enough, as a ‘service error’ has meant that we’ve been without internet for the last three days. It’s probably just the storm that’s hit the UK (or that’s what they seem to be claiming), but it’s extremely annoying and makes it suddenly difficult to get work done. I’m writing this newsletter in a cafe, which isn’t so bad, but still…
I think it’s time for a break! This will be the last post for 2024. I’m looking forward to sharing more about adventures in pedagogy in 2025. If I have one new years resolution in mind its to build a course of my own (or possibly two), as well as continue to work on various learning design projects, so there will be lots to talk about!
I hope you all have a great Christmas break and I look forward to chatting with you in 2025!
- Matt Phillpott
Gen AI and Learning Design
I randomly decided to ask Microsoft CoPilot a simple question to see what I got back: “What is learning design?” I asked it. This is the response that I got:
Learning design is the practice of creating educational experiences that facilitate effective learning. It involves the planning, structuring, and sequencing of learning activities, resources, and assessments to achieve specific educational objectives. Here are some key elements:
Learning Objectives: Clear goals that define what learners should know or be able to do by the end of the course or module.
Content: Carefully selected and organized information, resources, and materials that support the learning objectives.
Learning Activities: Interactive tasks, discussions, projects, or exercises that engage learners and help them practice and apply what they've learned.
Assessment: Tools and methods used to evaluate learners' understanding and progress, ensuring that learning objectives are met.
Feedback: Constructive responses provided to learners to guide their improvement and reinforce their understanding.
Learning design combines elements of pedagogy, psychology, and technology to create engaging and effective educational experiences. It can be applied in various settings, including traditional classrooms, online courses, and corporate training programs.
It’s interesting how the AI bot breaks everything done into its component parts: learning outcomes, activities, assessment, feedback - even references to how its a combination of these elements which is important. However, by doing so, the AI unsurprisingly misses an important point: the human element. Learning design is more than these components and indeed its not even just a combination, its really about alignment and how that alignment supports individual learners.
I often go on about Constructive Alignment, mainly because I view it as central to any attempt to design good learning journeys. Now, CoPilot does mention ‘sequencing’ which is part of constructive alignment, but really it’s more about looking at the whole and each part and seeing how it all fits together. I don’t feel that CoPilot quite grasps that a design is more than components put together in a certain way, its also about how individuals connect to what’s been designed. It’s the student element that’s missing and how everything should be aligned to their needs.
It gives me some peace of mind, to note that the human-element is still vital. AI will change the way we do things, but we still need expertise of our own so that we can always bring things back to the human context.
It’s interesting though to test AI every now and then with such questions just to see what comes up and to test my own thoughts about the subject.
Festive Advent Calendar from the University of Oxford
For quite a few years now the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford have created a ‘Festive Countdown Calendar’. This is a great idea and I love taking a look (although I never quite manage to open all 25 doors!).
The idea is that they share a different teaching and learning resource each day. These are not just resources created by the University of Oxford but from a wide variety of organisations including museums, archives, and scientific research institutions.
Take a look for yourself and dive into a range of resources. I’ve learned a lot by just exploring it for a while.