Design for e-Learning

Yesterday, I attended an event organised by the University of the Arts, and hosted at our very own Fashion Retail Academy. I chaired a couple of very interesting sessions covering the use of VLEs, Blogs, wikis, etc. However, the keynote presentation by Grainne Conole, Professor of e-Learning at the Open University (also keynote at our own Moodle RUG last November - see picture right), was what caught my interest. Some of the projects she's been working on have produced results, although not particularly surprising, are well worth restating. You can find them in the new publication by JISC, 'In their own words'

Namely, that our society is changing beyond recognition; technology and information rich, we live in a 'networked' society and becoming technology dependent. This has a massive impact on how we live our lives, including how we learn - 'distributed cognition', meaning that learning is intrinsically related to our environment.

Keeping abreast of these developments, whilst trying to cope with our own change management within sometimes overtly resistant organisational culture, is the e-Learning Manager's lot! The learning culture is shifting:

• individual -> social
• information -> communication
• passive -> interactive
• institutional tools -> personalised tools

The thought she left us all pondering, was 'How do we DESIGN learning activities which make effective use of tools and pedagogy?' Answers on a postcard please...