Report of the results of an IMS Learning Design Expert Workshop

Abstract

Europe has seen a number of learning design initiatives in the past years. Among them are the Open University UK Learning Design Initiative, JISC’s Design for Learning Programme, as well as the Open University of the Netherlands’ development of the Educational Modelling Language and its conversion into the specification IMS Learning Design. Particularly the last initiative inspired an IMS Learning Design Expert Workshop, which was held at the University of Vienna on November 20 & 21, 2008. This report contains a description of the purpose of the workshop, its methodologies and the results. Participating experts first brainstormed visions and problems of IMS Learning Design, and then developed potential solutions to some of the identified problems. Three groups formed to work on two of the identified problems in more depth: the usability and utility problem, and the life cycle of a unit of learning. The proposed solutions regarding the usability and utility problem were to investigate how teachers’ and learners’ representations of a learning design can be brought together, and to set up a research program to identify how teachers cognitively proceed when designing courses, and to map this knowledge to IMS LD. In regard to the life cycle of a unit of learning problem, the group suggested a system that continually exchanges information between runtime and editing systems so that units of learning can be updated accordingly.