A Learning Design Methodology for Developing Short Learning Programmes in Further and Continuing Education

Abstract

, has been designing digitally supported teaching within diploma programmes and tailor-made courses in the fields of health, education, social sciences and management. More and more of these programmes and courses are designed as blended learning and are characterised by a short time cycle of design, delivery and completion. Despite a recent addition of learning design expertise to the organisation, there is a predominant tendency in design processes to focus on the technical setup, the content and the participants, and very little on the role of the teachers. The teachers' role is challenged by a number of issues in relation to the growing use of blended and online learning, e.g. the task of facilitating the learning processes of the participants in new ways; a higher degree of exposure as the teacher often becomes the sole point of contact in online environments; communication skills needed to facilitate dialogue and collaboration in an online environment; etc. Furthermore, involvement of teaching staff in co-creation of new learning designs require skills which many lecturers do not have when they enter the design team for the first time, among others skills to articulate their pedagogical principles and technological imagination. Over time, we in our roles as learning designers in the School of Continuing Education have developed, tested and refined a technique for user involvement in the design work, and teachers now work with our professional learning designer and course producer on redesigning courses or creating new module or courses. In these collaborative design processes, we have identified a number of challenges, which will be dealt with in our paper.

Design education: learning design methodology to enrich project experience

“…Phenomenon 1: Due to a lack of understanding of appropriate design guidance and technical assistance, there is a gap between methodology-based learning and practical operations for students [30], [31].…”

“…Phenomenon 2: It is difficult for students to optimize or even create new skills and ideas with only project-based learning [22], [31].…”

Co-Design Process for Upskilling the Workforce in the Factories of the Future

“…This moves the design decision closer to the stakeholders that experience the problems from their own expertise view. The learning design methodology enables teachers to make more informed decisions about the learning activities, where a key principle is to make tacit knowledge more explicit and shared [8], [9].…”

“…The ICoED (Industrial Collaborative Educational Design), derived from the learning design method CoED [8], aims to facilitate the democratic discussion in a particular industrial company, where the learning design of upskilling the workforce is an objective. By the democratic discussion, all actors have a voice in the learning design, providing an explicit insight into each stakeholder's view on the upskilling problem, becoming a shared understanding.…”

Designable elements of integrative learning environments at the boundary of school and work: a multiple case study

“…An interesting direction for further research would be the characteristics of a design process when there is involvement of actors from different contexts (school and work), as is often the case with learning designs at the school-work boundary. Such studies might also take into account the ongoing and increasingly-collaborative nature of design processes (Buus and Georgsen 2018;Muñoz-Cristóbal et al 2018).…”