Mapping the Structure of Phoebe's Content

This structure is based around the components of a learning session as identified in a number of JISC documents, as well as a number of lesson plans developed for the Learning Design Tools project (see SourceDocuments). In this iteration of the project, the components map to the elements that have been identified in a (representative?) number of real-life plans as well as templates: i.e. they deliberately do not map to the components of an IMS LD learning design (although there is obviously some overlap). This is in keeping with our design rationale, which is to produce a tool which practitioners will find useful in their current practice, before we start migrating them to Learning Design "proper".

An individual component doesn't necessarily correspond to a "data value" (for want of a better term) that the user has to enter; rather, a number of them could be clustered together as an extended prompt -- e.g. the list of learner characteristics that need to be taken into consideration. Also, if a user doesn't enter any information for a specific component, then that component should not appear in the final output (whether printed and/or digital).

The sequence in which the components are listed below is entirely flexible -- in fact, they largely appear in the order in which I thought of them. It would be nice to allow users to edit the default list/map in order to delete the components which they never have to consider.

NB: Items in italics are subheadings grouping together related components.

A. "Global" information about the learning session as a whole

• Title of session
• Brief description of session(?)
• Author(s) of this plan
• Teaching staff to be involved (if other than the author, or additional to the author; indicate also whether they are team-teaching or teaching parallel classes/sets)
• Context within course/programme
  • Course/programme title
  • Year group
  • Module
  • No. of unit/session within module
• Timing
  • If F2F or blended F2F+Online
    • Term
    • Week
    • Date
    • Time (from... to...)
  • If online
    • Expected study time (in hours)
• Environment
  • If F2F or blended F2F+Online
    • Location (room) + does it need to be booked?
    • Technology required + does it need to be booked; are support staff aware and available?
  • If online
    • What technology do students need + how to ensure its availability?
• Students
  • Brief profile
  • Expected number (approx.) (if more than one class/set, no. and composition of sets)
  • Specific learner characteristics that need to be allowed for:
    • Learning styles
    • Differentiation incl. special needs
    • Linguistic competence (e.g. ESOL)
    • Culture/nationality
    • Accessibility
    • Social and interpersonal skills
    • ICT competence
• Pedagogical aspects
  • Source of curriculum (link to URL/ref to document if appropriate?)
  • Aims
  • Objectives / intended learning outcomes (are these the same?) (NB some plans divide these into "must/should/could" -- i.e. "required/desirable/useful"?)
    • Acquisition of knowledge
    • Specific skills (cognitive and/or psychomotor)
    • Social/collaborative skills
  • Method of assessment (if summative; formative assessments through the session will be indicated in the relevant activities)
  • Reading or other preparation required before the session (incl. links/refs to resources) (when/how are you going to inform the students about this work?)
  • Appropriate teaching approaches (NB not clear how this will inform their planning up-front...)
• Post-session reflection (How did it go relative to the plan? What changes need to be made to the plan -- assuming that the user hasn't updated it yet?)
• Overall contingency plan (e.g. change/drop individual activities; switch to another plan altogether)

B. Information about each activity/sub-task within the learning session

• Brief description
• Function: core to the sequence / conditional on outcome of preceding task (which one?) / differentiation / supplementary (reinforcement or extension) / contingency
• Position in sequence (NB need to consider branching + stand-alone activities e.g. contingency, reinforcement, extension)
• Start and end time / duration
• Social composition: individual / 2+ (how many per group or max. no. of groups? Self-selected or teacher-defined and if so, on what criteria e.g. ability, social) / whole-class (plenary)
• Resources (e- and/or P&P -- with file names or URLs)
• Alternative task for contingencies e.g. lack of time; technical problems

Issues TBD

1. Terminology:
   learning session vs. learning activity vs. unit of learning.
   activity (but not if used above) vs. task
   
2. Form(s) of representation for this info, other than as hierarchical list similar to the one above, but expandable/contractible.
3. There is a one-to-many relationship between global info and activity info, as each session may include more than one activity. However, do we want to consider a possible one-to-many relationship between an activity and global info -- i.e. where the same activity can crop up in different learning sessions? (Probably not, unless we were to store the info in a database, which isn't currently envisaged.)
4. How to represent branching where learners may do different activities depending on choice or differentiation?