ED-MEDIA

Keynote Speaker

Sharing Learning Designs: Lessons from the LAMS Community

James Dalziel

Macquarie University / LAMS Foundation, Australia

Abstract:

Learning Designs are shareable descriptions of teaching and learning processes – with a special focus on descriptions of technology-enabled sequences of student learning activities. One of the key benefits of shared Learning Designs is their potential for sharing good teaching ideas (or “pedagogical know-how”) among educators. The LAMS Community is currently the leading website for sharing Learning Designs (3100 members, 80 countries, 220 designs downloaded 7000 times as at March 2008) based on the LAMS Learning Design open source software. This presentation describes the experiences of the first 2.5 years of the LAMS Community, with a focus on factors that encourage, as well as inhibit, the sharing of Learning Designs. Specific topics will include: reactions to generic versus discipline-specific Learning Designs; impact of Web 2.0 approaches on sharing Learning Designs, and direct re-use/adaptation of existing Learning Designs versus Learning Designs as “inspirations” for new designs. The presentation will conclude with discussion of a new approach to fostering re-use of Learning Designs based on the concept of a “pedagogic planner” (also called an “activity planner”).

Biographical Information:

James Dalziel is Professor of Learning Technology and Director of the Macquarie E-Learning Centre Of Excellence (MELCOE) at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. James leads a number of projects including: LAMS (Learning Activity Management System), including roles as a Director of the LAMS Foundation and LAMS International Pty Ltd; MAMS (Meta Access Management System), a national identity and access infrastructure project for the Australian education sector; and ASK-OSS (the Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software), a national advisory service on open source issues for the Australia education and research sector. Prior to his current roles, James helped lead the COLIS (Collaborative Online Learning and Information Services) project, was a Director of WebMCQ Pty Ltd, an e-learning and assessment company, and was a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sydney.