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Hi,

Please pardon my late entry to the fray. The week’s discussion came so fast and furious that I have had to wait until weekend to reflect upon the messages

Whilst continuing to mix metaphors (isn’t the entire world a stage?), I’d like to expand the catering allegory because, being a chef I feel more qualified to do so. Helen’s idea of lesson plans being recipes with the implication that they ‘play a minor part’ suggests that tutors open a recipe ‘book’ and religiously follow details therein. Which sadly, is more likely to happen in the classroom than in catering reality?

A good chef will take the recipe book as a guide only – using it for ideas which suggest quantities, balance and interpretation. He or she will then create a dish, which despite carrying the same name or title is something personnel and innovative and which is hopefully so good that customers return for more of the same. The success of this depends entirely on the chef’s prior experience and community of practice.

Therefore, Helen’s suggestion that ‘scripts’ are shared more often is a good starting point – much like successful chefs share their recipes. John’s suggestion that following the perusal of case studies, tutors have internal debates resulting in “but I could use that” – is dead on! The more that pedagogues consider the (watch out metaphor coming . . .) ‘tools’ they use and from which tool-kit, the better.

The recipe analogy is not redundant when discussing learner needs either. Chefs also consider the commodities used and how they work with each other. This recognition of compatibility between tastes and textures, flavours and aromas will always lead to innovation. As Alistair suggests “There is clearly a difference between giving someone recipes to follow and giving them the inspiration to create their own variants using the ingredients at their disposal”. With knowledge and understanding of educational ‘commodities’ and ‘tools’, the tutor will be equipped to respond and react to learner needs more effectively.

One of the burning needs of staff (development) today is to be shown the recipe books and how they can be interpreted; to be advised how the various commodities can be mixed together to create a supportive and beneficial learning environment. Furthermore, teachers of the future will need to have an even more extensive knowledge of metaphorical trades and their tools than just Actors and Chefs.

Only when teaching staff have the skills to do this will Helen’s ‘learners as interactive and directive audience’ become a true (but necessary) possibility.

But I suppose that Martin’s original statement – the need for people to ‘think’ rather than just ‘copy’ said all this at the outset.

Hi All,

I think Learning Design is proving very attractive to us as at first glance it is fairly easy to understand the idea that it should be worth writing down our "recipes". As Oleg points out though there are different drivers. OUNL are using it as a way to describe their courses extending from EML, so that a course can be constructed with some independence from the environment that plays it. While the approach has a pedagogic neutral feel to it, the examples and aspects that get highlighted are where it brings in collaboration, recognition of roles, need for synchronisation etc. - i.e. aspects that tend to be missing from the mainstream VLEs.

Where I see a lot of interest though is on more generic designs that perhaps do not have all the content in place to actually play out to students. I believe there is value in offering these and also in tools that help people work with them. James Dalziel's LAMS system sits well in this, in that it can be used to manipulate various components into a sequence at one level, or it can be used to complete more detailed information that can then be used with students. At the moment LAMS does not match to Learning Design (in IMS terms) but I do think it gives a good idea of what might be useful.

I personally almost never create a word document from scratch - I will pick the closest previous document to hand and rework that. Some collection of reworkable designs (or activities or templates or designs) therefore seems attractive to me, provided the tools for reworking are relatively simple. Where part of the problem lies and where Helen and I have shared experience is that learning situations often become complex fairly quickly - so that the dropping in of an idea from one context changes in perhaps surprising ways in a new context. Then the other aspects that sit beside the design start to become more important: who used? what did they actually do? where were the problems? etc. My position at the moment is we really need to investigate the representations and will get some gains if not all that we might have hoped for.

Hmm - I see how joining in this debate leads to longer and longer emails. I will stop.

Patrick.

(Picking on Alistairs message to reply to because it had the nicest title.)

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