Designing Active Learning in Moodle – a preview of the Learning Designer tools Eileen Kennedy, D. N. Dimakopoulos, Diana Laurillard Presented at Moodlemoot Edinburgh 2014 www.moodlemoot.ie

1. Designing Active Learning in Moodle – a
preview of the Learning Designer tools
Patricia Charlton, Dionisis
Dimakopoulos, Bernard Horan, Eileen
Kennedy, Diana Laurillard, Joanna Wild

2. Learning Designer Tools
Learning Designer
http://learningdesigner.org/
CRAM
http://learningdesigner.org/CRAM
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3. What conditions are required
for active learning to take place?
Learning
experience needs
to be designed
Three cycles of
communication
between the
teacher and the
learners must be
engaged
(Laurillard,
2012)
Teacher
communication
cycle
Teacher practice
and modelling
cycle
Peer
communication
cycle
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4. Teacher and peer communication
cycles
1. The teacher must communicate their
concepts for the learner to
understand;
2. The teacher must provide an
environment to model the learning and
for the learner to practice within;
3. The learners must engage in peer
communication, providing their own
modelling and practice environments
to support each other’s learning.
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5. Learning Designer
An online tool to
support lesson
planning
Focuses on the
experience of
the learner
Specifies
teaching and
learning
activities by
learning type
Learning types:
Read/Watch/Listen
Discuss
Investigation
Practice
Produce
Collaborate
Dynamic pie chart
shows proportion of
learning type in
overall learning time
designed
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6. International Learning Designs Challenges:
Creating, sharing and reviewing learning designs
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7. What makes a good design?
Peer review criteria for learning designs
1 Test? Is there a
‘produce’ activity, or
some way the teacher
can use to test whether
outcomes are met?
2 Aligned? Are
outcomes, activities,
and produce activity
aligned?
3 Feedback? Is there
feedback from the
teacher, other
students, or the
technology?
4 Technology? Does the
technology support the
learning type(s)? Does
the design support
critical digital literacy?
5 Other? Are there
individual criteria that
are specific to this
design? 7/17

8. Time
Outcomes
Feedback
from pie
chart
Learning time, group size,
teacher presence
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9. Browse, adapt, curate your designs
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10. 10/17

11. Export to MS Word
11/17

12. Export to Moodle using IMSCC
12/17

13. Advantages of exporting
to IMSCC
IMS Common
Cartridge v1.1 is
used that can be
imported to Moodle
starting from
version 1.9
Course export
accepted by a
multitude of VLEs
Very good
documentation and
tools to assist
development
Scarce
documentation on
backup/export
Moodle files
13/17

14. Disadvantages of using IMSCC over
native Moodle export
Small coverage of
activities and
resources
supported by
Moodle can be
used in an IMS
common
cartridge
Moodle import
implementation
of IMSCC v1.1 is
buggy
Can only import
labels with very
small length
14/17

15. Current implementation
Learning designer can now export to
IMSCC v1.1
Exports a series of labels, to help
course designers layout and
populate the module
The labels include information from
outcomes, teaching learning
activities information (title,
duration, group size, resources
attached)
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16. Planned implementation
The Learning Designer will soon feature
an extensive resource manager, listing all
Moodle activities and resources
The activities attached to a teaching
learning activity which are supported by
IMSCC will be initialised automatically
It is envisaged that an API will be
published to allow the community to
create a plugin for the Learning Designer
to export to a Moodle backup file
16/17

17. Learning Designer
Functionality
 A library of learning designs:
indexed by learning
outcome & topic
 Abstract designs: migration
of good pedagogy across
domains
 Browse and adapt existing
designs
 Feedback on total learning
time, and the teacher
preparation and contact
time (CRAM)
 Export to Moodle
> Annotation by students for
evaluation feedback to
designer
> Promotion of design-test-
redesign cycle: library of
reviewed designs
> A prompt to include a
‘production’ activity for
collecting learning analytics
on learning outcomes
> Link OERs to designs
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