Guess I’m not a very good blogger since I’m not really posting my stuff frequently. ..Oh well. Anyway this is what I learned in Week4 (:
Like the first post, I shall try answering the questions that Mr. Low had provided us – which are: What is Learning Design? Why design learning? How to design learning?
First, What is Learning Design?
Simply put (or rather, what the lecture note says :P), Learning design is a variety of ways of designing learning experiences. Another definition I found in the reading (From “Describing ICT-based learning designs that promote quality learning outcomes”) says to describe a representation of the learning experience to which students are exposed. The keyword here will be ’learning experience’. Having that, I will say that Learning Design is a well-organized set/form of learning experiences. ..Hope that sounds good enough (: I feel that typing down all these definitions are quite redundant, but I’ll stop with this last one found in the same reading: Tasks are part of a learning design, a deliberately planned set of experiences that are intended to help students/learners learn. –This one was the most understandable one for me!
Why design learning?
I always feel that these ‘why’ questions are a bit troublesome to answer, but at the same time quite important. As I wrote in my former post (and Vanessa has agreed with me, thanks!), I feel that asking ‘why’ questions are a good way to learn and maintain the knowledge/information, because it actually makes you think of the fact deeply. I’ll pick up some points from the readings:
“..The value of designing for learning lies in the fact that teachers can use the resulting learning designs to plan the learning experiences that learners need to achieve the planned learning outcomes.”
According to the reading, well-designed workflows can:
These are the stuff that I picked up from the readings, so there may be things that I missed out..
Anyway, I do think that Learning Design is important.
This is not designing for educational purposes (slightly, it is though), but I was doing the assignment for NM3208 (Designing Content for New Media – quite tough module, double-check the students who took this module before bidding! LOL), which was to re-design the Multimedia Development Laboratory (MDL) website into a new one. What we failed to do, was to think of a design beforehand. One reason for this was because we never done creating a website, but the secondary reason is because we didn’t have a certain design idea. Since we kept putting in new ideas and throwing out the old ones at the same time, we had to keep on checking what was done, and what we need to do next.
I guess this is the same with Learning Design. If it’s not well-designed first, during the teaching process, you’ll recognizing some lacking parts, or redundant stuff. So that’s why need to do Learning Design, I think (:
By the way, I still don’t know the difference between Learning Design and Instructional Design.. Is it just that Instructional Design is a linear process using the ADDIE model, but Learning Design is not? And why does Design Learning ‘Places the onus of learning onto the learner’? (Both of this comes from the lecture notes) Think I need to re-read my stuff, or ask Mr. Low!
Ok, the last question – How to design learning?
This is what we did during the lecture activities (: Learning design compromises task (what learners are required to do, square), resources (things that supports learners to conduct the task, triangle), and support mechanisms (exist from a teacher implementing it, circle). First we choose the objective, then the task, and after that, the we decide what is best for the learners to complete the task, combining the resources and supports.
The activity was quite interesting – thought it could be applied not only to educational stuff, but also in normal life. For example, when you want to plan a menu for the coming tennis match, or when you want to plan for the midterm test. The objective will be to get an A for the midterm, the task will be to completely understand Lecture 1-6, and use the resources and supports (: It also reminded me of advertising and PR – because these require a well-organized plan.
When we design learning, we will need to keep in mind to:
Awww I’m so bad at summarizing stuff D: It keeps on going so long! Sigh
Writing this blog makes me realize how much I DON’T remember, so it’s kinda scary.. Guess it’s better than to realize that before exam though ><
I was reading the other blogs and realized that its better that I write down which blog I read and commented on. Sorry a bit late though ><
I read:
And commented on Ridza’s blog (:
Reading other blogs help me understand the concepts/theories better!
