[See Courses on Using Educational Taxonomies] I believe a sound learning design process should ensure students experience all five domains of educational objectives. Course designs that do not reflect the broad range of skills and attributes that university graduates should acquire through their studies do our students a disservice. To support both course designers (module or programme), and …
Author Archives: Dr Simon Paul Atkinson (PFHEA)
Interpersonal Domain
[See Courses on Using Educational Taxonomies] The vast majority of employers ask that new employees, notably graduates, be effective communicators; that they should be able to work well within a team; that they take responsibility and that they are accountable for their actions. Increasingly in a global context, new employees are also expected to be …
The End of the Humanities – Luxembourg Conference
A conference with the same title, held between 10-13 September 2017, at the Université du Luxembourg’s Belval Campus, Esch-sur-Alzette, was provocative, insightful and challenging. Of our contribution later, but it’s worth pointing out that of all the discipline groups it is perhaps the Humanities that increasingly struggles to justify their place in the academic pantheon. …
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Visual Data Collection Workshop
I had the pleasure of working with 9 heritage professionals on Wednesday 7th September at thestudio in Birmingham on a research workshop exploring both a novel data collection methodology and the relevance of a particular educational model to the heritage sector. I have to say that thestudio is a great venue. Accessible, well equipped, well-lit …
Defining Transferable Skills in Education
[See Courses for Educational Taxonomies] Recently I have been advising colleagues on how they should write Intended Learning Outcomes across all five educational domains (cognitive, knowledge, affective, psychomotor and interpersonal) and conform to the QAA guidance (UK). This guidance (widely adopted across UK higher education a sector) breaks ILOs into: Knowledge and Understanding Intellectual Skills …
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BETT 2017: Learning Design and Technology in HE
It was my pleasure today to present some of my visualisation tools to be used in higher education learning design. At the BETT2017 exhibition in London, with a small crowd of some 25 people, I shared the following presentation. With just 20 mins (plus 10 for questions) it was really simply an opportunity to emphasise …
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Simplifying the Alignment of Assessment
Some recent work with programme designers in other UK institutions suggests to me that quality assurance and enhancement measures continue to be appended to the policies and practices carried out in UK HEIs rather than seeing a revitalising redesign of the entire design and approval process. This is a shame because it has produced a …
Potential for International Exchange
I am in Mexico City this week sharing ideas around academic good practice with colleagues from the international network to which my institution belongs. Looking at the program it becomes apparent that there is a deep rich potential for faculty exchange, curriculum resource re-use, and cross institutional quality assurance. Already though it becomes clear that …
Using Learning Design to Unleash the Power of Learning Analytics
Atkinson, S.P. (2015). Using Learning Design to Unleash the Power of Learning Analytics. In T. Reiners, B.R. von Konsky, D. Gibson, V. Chang, L. Irving, & K. Clarke (Eds.), Globally connected, digitally enabled. Proceedings ascilite 2015 in Perth (pp. 358-364 / CP:6-CP:10). A very enjoyable presentation made this week at ascilite 2015 in Perth, …
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Graduate Competencies, Employability and Educational Taxonomies: Critique of Intended Learning Outcomes
[See Courses on Educational Taxonomies] We hear much about the changing world of work and how slow higher and professional education is to respond. So in an increasingly competitive global market of Higher Apprenticeships and work-based learning provision I began to take a particular interest in students’ ‘graduateness’. What had begun as an exploratory look …
Enhancements to the SOLE Tookit – now version 3.5
I have no idea what the protocol is for naming versions of things. I imagine, like me, someone has an idea of what the stages are going to look like, when a truly fresh new is going to happen. For me I have a sense that version 4.0 of the SOLE Toolkit will incorporate what …
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Rich visualizations and costing in SOLE 3.5
As promised this version of the SOLE Toolkit, 3.5, remain a free, unprotected and macro-free Excel workbook with rich functionality to serve the learning designer. Version 3.5 has two significant enhancements.
Rich visualization of the learning spaces and tools: that students are to engage with in their learning. This provides an alternative, fine-grain, view of the students modes of engagement in their learning.
Faculty-time calculations in design and facilitating: based on the learning spaces and tools to be used
Why ‘learning analytics’ is like a sewer
Back in the late northern hemisphere summer of 2013 I drafted a background paper on the differences between Educational Data Mining, Academic Analytics and Learning Analytics. Entitled ‘Adaptive Learning and Learning Analytics: a new design paradigm‘, It was intended to ‘get everyone on the same page‘ as many people at my University, from very different …
ePortfolios: for whom and wherefore
(unformed thoughts…) I’m exploring a student e-portfolio solution. I probably didn’t need to install an instance of Moodle (2.5.9) and one of Mahara (1.10.2) to know it’s a match made in heaven. It’s been fun patching the two systems together (also linked up Moodle to Google Drive to test the outputs there too – plain …
Is Higher Education lacking its affective dimension?
Note: Updated high-quality versions of educational taxonomies are available here Whilst the majority of writings and reflections on the use of taxonomies of educational objectives remain focused on the cognitive domain, typified by Bloom (1984), there is growing attention to the affective domain, particularly in professional education. Bloom’s now famous research project, which resulted …
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Paper: Rethinking personal tutoring systems, the need to build on a foundation of epistemological beliefs.
Newly uploaded, here is the final paper that was previewed in blog postings during December 2014. Atkinson, S. P. (2014) Rethinking personal tutoring systems: the need to build on a foundation of epistemological beliefs. BPP University Working Papers. London: BPP University. My argument is that in order to tailor effective support for students we must understand better …
Research: Epistemological Beliefs and Ill-structured Problem-solving
Charoula Angeli and Nicos Valanides, both at the University of Cyprus, have recently published a fascinating brief study of research entitled “Epistemological Beliefs and Ill-structured Problem-solving in Solo and Paired Contexts” This mixed-method exploration sought to examine the different relationships between epistemological beliefs and quality of thinking when an individual encountered an ill-structured problem on …
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Adaptation of Dave’s Psychomotor Domain
internasyonal na mga workshop / International Workshops [See Courses on Educational Taxonomies] I have received some interesting feedback and critique of my circular representation of Ravindra H. Dave’s psychomotor domain of educational objectives. I have been asked why I have chosen to use the circular design, to use alternative verbs and to expand the definition …