Teachers' perceptions of learning design recommendations

Abstract

The uptake of personalised approaches in education apart from students' learning needs should also involve teachers' needs. This paper addresses the understudied topic of integrating a Recommender System (RS) in a Learning Design (LD) environment as a means to personalise the support offered to teachers for designing learning. We present a study in a teacher education context, collecting teachers' perceptions of learning design recommendations to explore the recommendation form and method that teachers value while designing. Our findings point out teachers' appreciation of an LD environment integrating a macro form of recommending entire learning designs alike learning objects in online educational repositories. They also favour complementing the macro with a micro form that supports the LD process by recommending specific elements within a learning design. Our study indicates the need for a hybrid recommendation method appropriately filtering a learning design's context and evaluation. Also, this research justifies the need to integrate an RS in an LD environment, reporting as teachers' anticipated benefits (i) stimulating the initiation of designing for learning, (ii) advancing their LD practice by conceiving new design ideas, and (iii) providing a means of developing their LD experience effectively. The anticipated challenges point out the requirement of an RS that provides appropriate recommendations and the high need to cultivate teachers' LD knowledge and mindset towards employing LD environments and RSs effectively.