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.

>> denotes lists that should be initially closed, but can be opened to reveal sub-items and closed to hide them again.

The amount of text in the following list will be reduced as the content is generated

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 + Lab assistants, LSAs, demonstrators)
• 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
    • Dates of availability (from... to...)
    • 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: (+ what you need to do: e.g. allow more time, print handouts in large fonts; use coloured backgrounds in online materials) >>
    • Learning styles
    • Differentiation incl. special needs
    • Linguistic competence (e.g. ESOL)
    • Culture/nationality
    • Accessibility
    • Social and interpersonal skills
    • Competence in key skills -- ICT, literacy, number
• 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
    • Understanding
    • Specific skills (cognitive and/or psychomotor)
    • Social/collaborative skills
    • How each outcome maps to one or more of the aims
  • 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: i.e. theoretical or practical models (NB not clear how this will inform their planning up-front... Might be most appropriate to think in terms of teacher-student relationship.) (NB also: is this to be used to adapt the activity-level guidance to the user's chosen approach? Could be problematic, esp as individual activities may work best with different approaches.) (? Map their overall intentions to appropriate practice models or specific examples? Elicit the appropriate ones by giving them drop-down lists of categories to select from and therefore narrowing down to the closest fit.)
• Overall contingency plan (e.g. change/drop individual activities; switch to another plan altogether)
• Post-session reflection >>
  • Extent to which your aims were achieved
  • Benefits and opportunities
  • Problems and risks
  • Learners' feedback (general impression if opinions weren't sought explicitly)
  • Advice to others
  • Other reflections
  • Changes that need to be made to the plan

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

• Brief description and aims of the learning task
• Specific decisions
  • Learning outcome of this task (and its relation to the intended LOs of the session as a whole)
  • Technique (use taxonomy "smoothed" into desciptions?)
  • 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)
  • Role of teacher in activity
  • Equipment required (e.g. for lab-based class)
  • Resources (e- and/or P&P -- with file names or URLs): for tutor / students
  • Method of feedback (extrinsic/intrinsic, teacher/peer, verbal/written...)
• 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) (Numbering system TBD)
• Start and end time / duration
• Contingency plan for this task e.g. if lack of time; technical problems

Guidance/support for each item

Generic composition:

• What this item means
• Why it's important (or not!) to consider it (if not self-evident)
• (Narrative text) advice incl. brief examples of action (? include verbatim quotes from practitioners rather than 3rd-hand reports?)
• Links to:
  • More in-depth info (inside and/or outside Phoebe?)
  • Case studies
  • Learning designs (re-represented for ease of availability -- devise our own FoR and notation?)

Issues TBD

1. Terminology:
   learning session vs. learning activity vs. unit of learning.
   activity (but not if used above) vs. task
   Can we make the planner usable for planning learning sessions at multiple levels -- e.g. a whole course, in which case the "activities" would be units within the course (so not all "fields" would be required). Users would then create separate plans for each unit -- could give the plan name (URL?) in the "activity" data.
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?
5. Granularity of a) the whole thing and b) individual activities; e.g. are discussion and reporting back a single activity or 2 separate ones (e.g. for timing?)