A Pattern Language based Learning Design Studio to Support Teaching as Design

Ling Li, Postdoc Fellow, University of Hong Kong

Abstract

The information-rich age has shifted the purpose of education from providing knowledge to cultivating capable and autonomous learners who are able to address the emerging challenges of the 21st century. This requires the repositioned role of teachers as learning designers who carefully craft and test effective learning conditions, in which learners’ intellectual capacities can be broadened and deepened. In both learning design and learning analytics communities, the recent years have witnessed a flowering of methods and tools to support and analyze designs for learning. However, the bloom of research has not brought impact on the mainstream educational practice. One major obstacle to realizing the potential benefits is the lack of a systematic language and tools to guide learning design practice, and to capture and link learning design to learning analytics.

This talk presents an ongoing work in the development of a Learning Design Studio (LDS), which is a technological platform that effectively supports teachers’ course design. The LDS differs from other learning design tools in that it is underpinned with a systematic pattern language that can 1) provide systematic scaffolding to teachers’ design practice, 2) capture the different levels of granularities and complexities of course design, and 3) enable design-aware learning analytics by sequentially translating teachers’ intuitive questions about learning to evidence-based questions, and then, to operationalizable analytic questions. This talk will conclude with a discussion of the LDS to serve as a technology platform to support inter-professional collaboration among learning designers and learning analytics communities. ‍

Bio

Dr. Ling LI received her PhD in Educational Technology from the University of Cambridge. She is now working as a post-doctoral fellow at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. Ling has been working on a Hong Kong Government funded project, in which she plays a key role in the conceptualization and design of a technological platform that supports effective learning and assessment design. Ling’s research focuses on learning design, learning analytics, teacher inquiry, and the connections among them.