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 that technology needs to be intelligently designed into programmes and modules in service of specified learning outcomes to be meaningful. I unveiled some recent work on an original taxonomy for the ‘Interpersonal Domain’ and shared an updated version of the Toolkit (available here)
Category: SOLE
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, Australia. Wonderful to engage with this vibrant and hospitable community. Amongst some fascinating presentations exploring the theoretical and information management dimension of learning analytics and academic analytics, my very foundational work on constructively aligned curricula and transparency in design was I believe welcomed.
I said in my paper that I believed “New learning technologies require designers and faculty to take a fresh approach to the design of the learner experience. Adaptive learning, and responsive and predicative learning systems, are emerging with advances in learning analytics. This process of collecting, measuring, analysing and reporting data has the intention of optimising the student learning experience itself and/or the environment in which the experience of learning occurs… it is suggested here that no matter how sophisticated the learning analytics platforms, algorithms and user interfaces may become, it is the fundamentals of the learning design, exercised by individual learning designers and faculty, that will ensure that technology solutions will deliver significant and sustainable benefits. This paper argues that effective learning analytics is contingent on well structured and effectively mapped learning designs.”
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 I am currently learning about assessment and ‘badges’, self-certification and team marking. But for now I’m not there yet and am building on what I have learnt about student digital literacies so I will settle for Version 3.5.
This version of the SOLE Toolkit 3.5.1, remains a completely free, unprotected and macro-free Excel workbook with rich functionality to serve the learning designer. In version 3.0 I added more opportunities for the student to use the toolkit as an advanced organiser offering ways to record their engagement with their learning. It also added in some ability to sequence learning so that students could plan better their learning although I maintained this was guidance only and should allow students to determine their own pathways for learning.
Version 3.5 has two significant enhancements. Firstly, it introduces a new dimension, providing a 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. It permits the designer to plan not only for a balance of learning engagement but also a balance of environments and tools. This should allow designers to identify where ‘tool-boredom’ or ‘tool-weariness’ is possibly a danger to learner motivation and to ensure that a range of tools and environments allow students to develop based on their own learning preferences.
Secondly, it allows for a greater degree of estimation of staff workload, part of the original purpose of the SOLE Model and Toolkit project back in 2009. This faculty-time calculations in design and facilitating are based on the learning spaces and tools to be used. This function allows programme designers and administrators, as well as designers themselves, to calculate the amount of time they are likely to need to design materials and facilitate learning around those materials.
I invite you to explore the SOLE Toolkit on the dedicated website for the project and would welcome any comments of feedback you might have.
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
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. It permits the designer to plan not only for a balance of learning engagement but also a balance of environments and tools. This should allow designers to identify where ‘tool-boredom’ or ‘tool-weariness’ is possibly a danger to learner motivation and to ensure that a range of tools and environments allow students to develop based on their own learning preferences.
Faculty-time calculations in design and facilitating: based on the learning spaces and tools to be used there is now a function to allow programme designers and administrators, as well as designers themselves, to calculate the amount of time they are likely to need to design materials and facilitate learning around those materials.
This builds on newly designed functionality release in September 2014 in version 3 of the toolkit, namely;
- Predicated Workload – the amount of time the designer anticipates students will spend is on activities charted.
- Sequencing activities – the ability to suggest the order in which activities should be tackled. It remains an open approach and so the numbering system (letters, Roman, multiple instances of the same item) is open. It is considered important in the SOLE Model that students should take responsibility for the learning process as so the sequence should be suggestive or advised.
- Completion Record – a column has been added to allow students to record whether an activity has been completed alongside indicating the amount of time was actually spent on any given activity.
- Objectives Met Record – an area is included to allow students to indicate that they believe they have met the objectives for each individual topic/week.
At its core the toolkit serves to implement a model of learning based on the SOLE Model itself and it is worth reminding yourself how the model is designed to work.
Further Details:
Here are two short videos that detail the significant enhancement made in Version 3.5 of the Tookit.
Visualisation of Learning spaces
Calculating Faculty-Time in Design and Facilitation
Version 3.0 of SOLE Toolkit released.
Version 3.0 of the SOLE Toolkit has been released on the solemodel.org website today.
The toolkit is an integrated spreadsheet workbook that supports implementation a learning design based on the SOLE Model. The SOLE model advocates a holistic approach to learning that encourages designers to recognise that the student spends significant time away from formal learning contexts and that they bring experience and context to any learning situation.
The changes in Version 3.0 reflect a desire to strengthen the student’s use of the toolkit as an advanced organiser. These changes include:
- Active Verbs – the terms used to describe the elements of the SOLE Model now uses active verbs to describe each of the elements.
- Predicated Workload – the amount of time the designer anticipates students will spend is now charted.
- Sequencing activities – the ability to suggest the order in which activities should be tackled.
- Completion Record – allow students to record whether an activity has been completed alongside indicating the amount of time was actually spent.
- Objectives Met Record – allow students to indicate that they believe they have met the objectives for each individual topic/week.
You can download the toolkit from this website here. As always this work is free to use but as always I would appreciate feedback from users as to changes they make and the usage they make of the work.
Update to SOLE Model reflections
I have updated the SOLE Model website with a reflection on some staff development guidance offered by London Metropolitan University on their eMatrix website. They were kind enough to list the SOLE Model as one of four models for conceptualising distance and blended learning. It’s a privilege to be listed alongside Professors Terry Anderson and Randy Garrison’s ‘Community of Inquiry’, Professor Diana Laurillard’s ‘Conversational Framework’ and Professor Gilly Salmon’s ‘5 Step Model’.
I stated:
“What is clear is that to have a theoretical framework for effective on-line learning design is essential. I may have deviated from Anderson and Garrison’s separation from the social and cognitive processes, and from Salmon’s stress for human socialisation but the SOLE Model does allow for the personal, communitarian and societal dimensions to learning. I also differ from Laurillard’s sequenced activity designs that result from the conversational framework into a more ‘freeform’ learning design at the theoretical level but the toolkit development will hopefully include further structural aspects in the near future. Learning and teaching online (distance or ‘blended’) presents unique challenges for teachers and students alike. Personally I advocate transparency to design for the student by sharing the design as an advanced organiser (SOLE Toolkit) in order to express clarity of the learning process (dialogue) and to encourage interaction and feedback leading to enhancement. Whichever way you look at it, it is a privilege to find the SOLE Model included in such illustrious company.”
Universal application of the SOLE toolkit
I am very pleased that the model and the toolkit continue to attract attention despite the relative neglect that I have subjected it to.
There have recently been to academic enquiries that give me some calls to think that the model and toolkit continues to have significant value. One was a request to use the illustration of the model in an upcoming chapter on blended learning, which was the challenge which prompted the models development in the first place. And the second an invitation to translate the SOLE toolkit into Spanish. This second request is itself particularly interesting since I believe the fundamental concepts to be universally applicable. Some of the early writings around the SOLE model explored the ways in which it might be applied in indigenous educational contexts and so the opportunity to translate into another language community internationally is very exciting.
I hope that in the not too distant future there may be Spanish resources available here to share and this will give an impetus for the further development of the toolkit.
Reflected Glory: Sugata Mitra’s SOLE Toolkit
I’ve been surprised this week to find a sudden increase in my blog visitors. As these peeks happen occasionally I just put this down to some MOOC out there stumbling across my SOLE model and deciding it was worthy of sharing. Always pleasing in itself, but not surprising perhaps. This was a sudden and unexpected peek, so one digs a little deeper into the stats and yes, lots of people seemed to be searching for the ‘SOLE Toolkit’. Excellent finally the traction, the critical mass, I have been….. ah.
Merely reflected glory it seems, for when I also do the ‘SOLE Toolkit’ search I find that the remarkable Sugata Mitra, currently at Newcastle University (UK), has been awarded the 2013 TED Prize for his work to ‘Build an School in the Cloud‘ and part of his contribution is something also called the SOLE Toolkit. His ‘Self-Organized Learning Environment ‘ toolkit is an amazing read and well worth getting hold of. I actually think there may be more similarities to these two namesakes than is apparent at first. I contend that any effective environment should allow for each of the nine elements of the ‘Student Owned Learning Engagement’ model and Mitra’s ‘SOLE Mindset’.
When I developed the SOLE model in early 2010 I was most concerned with the notion that teaching staff found it difficult to draw the balance between maintaining an instructivist identity, the expert role, and the facilitation of independent and thoughtful self-discovery amongst learners. The Student-Owned Learning Engagement model was envisaged as a professional development instrument primarily, to engage teachers in deconstructing the learning experience and to see their role in the process from a different perspective. It’s a privilege to share the name with Mitra’s different but similar aspiration.
Ending the year as a non-Cartesian?
There is something slightly disturbing about checking the web for uses of your work. One finds the odd undergraduate presentation that has ‘borrowed’ a graphic, or quoted your quotes as notes, and other lyrical misdemeanours. One even risks finding oneself renamed, although I have to say I find ‘Simorn’ a little too contemporary for my tastes. What is particularly interesting is to find oneself cited in such a way that one is ‘designated’, purposed as a standard bearer for a position one didn’t know one held. I’m intrigued to find that my IRRODL article on the SOLE model from February 2011 served as an illustration of ‘applied non-cartesian concepts‘ by psychologydegree.net (20.03.13 Page now removed). Fascinating.
Version 2.4: Weekly Objectives
Version 2.3 of the SOLE toolkit (August 2011) introduced a ‘dashboard’ allowing the course designer to see the distribution of student workload across all the weeks, or learning units. Version 2.4 (October 2011) sees the incorporation of a ‘Weekly Objectives’ view, drawing together the weekly objectives set against the module outcomes for the first time. Each iteration is designed to provide staff and student with a greater transparency to the learning design intention. Version 2.4 is also distributed as a fully populated exemplar, rather than a blank template to aid its deconstruction and usage.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5OSN6loN9s]