Role Based Design - A practical way to build organisational e-Learning design capacity

Editor's Notes

1. Hello my name is Steven Parker and I recently completed my Masters in eLearning. I work as an Educational designer at the South Western Sydney Institute within a Vocational Education support team called iTEL and this presentation summarises the findings of my research on ‘Role Based Design’.
2. In this time of major change my research focused on a challenge raised by Ken Robinson where he asks “How will we educate people for the economies of the 21st century given that it is impossible to anticipate what future economies will look like?”…This for me is a design issue.
3. My position was that developing staff e-learning design capacity was foundational for SWSi to adapt to change. For example a clear e-learning design leads to a well-developed product and facilitation. This informs evaluation which leads to understanding of how to adapt products to meet the needs of the changing economy.
4. At SWSi we have thousands of teacher’s who are fantastic subject matter experts but not ‘across the board’ strong in e-learning design … With this in mind the research question was “How can we develop creative capacity to design e- Learning courses to educate for the economies of the 21st century?”. This was the SWSi challenge…
5. Learning about the e-Learning design process and tools like Moodle can be a lot to digest at the start. This may explain why many of the Moodle courses I have seen, are simply repositories for resources with no documented learning design thinking.
6. Also under new Vocational Education compliance criteria fully online courses are required to document how a learning design maps to performance criteria and engages students to achieve learning outcomes. All of these challenges lead to the question “how do you support teachers' e-Learning Design creativity?”.
7. According to Ken Robinson there are four key pillars that support creativity namely:1 - Focus on teachers' creative capacity development 2 - Most great learning happens in groups3 - Collaboration is the stuff of growth4 - If we atomise we lose natural learning process
8. Similarly the ‘Role Based Design’ model supports teachers’ by: Developing their creative e-Learning design capacity Working in teams on Moodle products, And in the process learning from each other …
9. The Role Based design model chunks up the e-Learning design process. For example if a teacher is new to Moodle they focus on how to facilitate a pre-developed product and provide feedback on the learning design to the designer and developer.
10. Role Based design training is mapped to the ADDIE e-learning design process whereby- The Designer learns how to analyse and design topics using a learning design template.doc- The Developer learns how to edit Moodle following a template- The Facilitator learns how to facilitate using communication tools and gradebook
11. The RBD model has two assertions that must be understood. The first assertion is that tutoring of a learning designer is key and the second assertion is that each Moodle team requires a team leader to be mentored in a leadership role to coordinate team activity.
12. Based on piloting the model on several projects tutoring of a key designer on learning design leads to the development of a learning design template which provides a common foundation to inform other teachers involved in the development, facilitation and evaluation of a Moodle product.
13. Mentoring a team leader on how to facilitate team work is necessary to create a collaborative and inclusive environment for teachers. Specifically a team leader is mentored on how to manage the project and guide team activity.
14. OK let’s focus in on the Designer role tutoring where teachers are stepped through how to use the learning design template. The learning design template is key as it provides a common approach when designing a Moodle course which is flexible enough for teachers to capture their creative ideas.
15. The design model of choice is ‘Action mapping’ which involves:- Identifying the learning goal or assessment task- Identifying what people need to do to prepare for assessment- Designing activities that help people to practice - Finally identifying the minimum information needed for the activities
16. This screenshot gives you an impression of how the learning design template looks. For example the first row identifies the assessment tasks, the next row identifies what people need to do by translating performance criteria into plain English learning outcomes etc. Let’s listen to Teacher feedback on what surprised them the most about using the template.
17. Interview with teacher in response to a question at the end of the Designer role training – What surprised you the most? “I am pleased, I came in thinking why do I have to do this before I even start, I’ve been doing for 2 years but it clears it up,  what is already in my head on paper. Also if everyone follows this format it will give the students a good experience in terms of consistency.”
18. The feedback from teachers who went through the learning design tutoring was they were able to think creatively within the constraints of the template. The benefit of this convergent thinking approach is that creative learning design thinking can be explained to the Moodle developer and facilitators… with clarity.
19. Let’s focus on the Developer ‘flipped’ training that followed the Designer role tutoring. Before attending a group session Teachers who had previously completed a learning design template were asked to watch videos on editing Moodle and they were also given editing teacher access to their own Moodle course template.
20. The “Moodle course template” enables the quick translation of the learning design template to Moodle as they both correlate to each other. The Moodle course template also scaffolds communication between the designer and developers as they have a common reference point to discuss their work.
21. The benefit of teachers watching videos on how to edit the Moodle templates beforehand was valuable as face to face time could be spent doing the development work. Teachers with Moodle experience felt they could just get on with it and inexperienced teachers felt reassured they could pause and replay the videos or get support from others if needed.
22. The developer meetup led to a breakthrough in communication on learning design for example teachers started critiquing each other’s work as they had the common framework of the Learning design template and Moodle template in their minds. Let’s look at an example prototype product developed using the Moodle template.
23. AT END OF VIDEO – Once Moodle prototypes are ready…
24. …facilitator role training is organised As part of a Faculty change management strategy. This involves bringing together an entire faculty section to see the Moodle prototypes and reflect on facilitation practice. The facilitator training is very focused on understanding the learning design and how to use basic Moodle tools for communication and assessment.
25. … For example facilitators learn how to use the Moodle calendar and forums and induct learners. The facilitator role training is focused on learning through doing and each teacher is given a group to enrol their students as part of training. Facilitators also learn how to use ‘TeacherNotes’, a hidden section in the Moodle course for team communication.
26. Culturally facilitator role training aims to establish a workflow of continual prototyping based on feedback whereby- The Designer creates the learning design- The developer develops prototype topics- The prototypes are made available to facilitators to pilot with students
27. Pause - OK as previously the second assertion of the Role Based Design model is that mentoring team leaders is critical. Team leaders engage the hearts and minds of teachers to participate in the e-Learning design process.
28. As part of the pilot it was important that the team leader has already completed the Designer and Developer role training and developed a prototype so they could lead by example and show other teacher’s collaborative e-Learning design works. Team leaders are coached on how to coordinate role based training and manage project logistics and reporting based on AGILE thinking.
29. In this context AGILE thinking is a project management methodology that involves assigning team members tasks to achieve role based milestones within short two week periods. SWSi has 3,000 staff and the capacity for to coach team leaders does not currently exist at iTEL.
30. As a result existing team leaders will need to mentor new faculty project team leaders if the Role Based Design model is to scale up and be implemented across the organisation.
31. To date the Role Based Design model has been piloted with five project teams from different faculties and a number of products have been created in Moodle. Based on interviews the model appears to develop teachers' e-learning design capacity through the cross-pollination of ideas and perspectives by teachers working collaboratively.
32. A criticism of the pilot is how much support and time it took to create the right social conditions for collaborative team work to occur. That being said there is an increased demand from faculties to design Moodle products. Therefore research is occurring in consultation with faculty management to make the model more self-directed and scalable.
33. A key strategy to scale up is the gamification of our MoodleATSWSi course to simulate one to one tutoring of teachers. For example a teacher can choose their team role then through a combination of video tutoring, goal setting and simulated feedback progressively increase their skills to accumulate badges that reflect capability.
34. To describe the idea of ‘teaching the design process’ to others I coined the word ski-dio-gogy. Etymologically the word ‘design’ in Greek is ‘Schedio’ and ‘agogy’ means leading or teaching therefore using the word ski-dio-gogy to describe approaches that teach the learning design process to others is appropriate.
35. In summary Role Based Design is a social learning model which empowers teachers to share design knowledge and create products collaboratively. I believe this requires a shift in thinking whereby educational designers like myself become more of an ‘enabler’ and adopt a ski-dio-gogical approach to lead and teach the design process to others…
36. …this I believe will strengthen SWSi’s organisational capacity to respond to challenges through identifying staff with e-learning design skillsets who can quickly form design teams in response to the core challenge of educating for the changing economies of the 21st century.
37. To finish, here is the reference to my published paper on Role based Design which contains the teacher interviews and data in support of this presentation.