KNOX - RAVENSWOOD - KEMPSEY
Conference July 2013
Learning Design using Lesson LAMS
Table of Contents 1. Intro to Learning Design ..………………………………………………... 3 2. What are effective learning sequences? ........................................... 6 3. What is LAMS? …………………………………………………….…….… 9 4. How is LAMS used to deliver effective learning sequences? …..... 12 5. Description of LAMS activities …………………………………….....… 16 6. Creating and Running lesson sequences ……………….………….… 20 7. Assessment, Monitoring, Feedback and Analysis ………………..… 25 8. Further Reading ………………………………………………………….... 26
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Introduction to Learning Design Learning design is a “descriptive framework of activity structures that are designed following many pedagogical methods”. The most important promise of learning design is the sharing of good teaching and learning ideas.
What is Learning Design? Learning Design theory is a new attempt to describe the foundational elements of the educational process. It provides conceptual and technical tools to describe who is involved in a learning activity, what resources are required for the activity, how the activity is conducted, and most importantly, how a collection of activities are structured into a Learning Design (also called a unit of learning, sequence of learning activities, digital lesson plan, etc).
Learning Design includes the following elements: •
a sequence of activities (assessment, discussion, simulation),
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performed by one or more players (learners, teachers etc.),
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in an environment consisting of learning objects or services.
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A particular Learning Design may be entirely online, a mixture of online and face-to-face tasks ("blended learning") or it could be conducted entirely face-to-face with no computers (in this case, the particular Learning Design acts as a standardised written description of the educational process - like a K-12 lesson plan). One way to think of a Learning Design system is as a workflow engine for collaborative activities. A particular Learning Design is like an educational recipe for a teacher - it describes ingredients (content) and instructions (process).
“A ‘learning design’ (LD) is defined as the description of the teaching-learning process that takes place in the unit of learning.”
The establishment of the IMS Learning Design specifications in 2003 “aimed to represent units of learning in a semantic, formal and interpretable way”
Learning Design is not just the delivery of online content and objects or single learner mode but attempts to convey good teaching with a view to capturing with the potential to re-create and adapt.
Benefits to teaching and learning. Learning Design acts as a means of eliciting designs from academics in a format that can be tested and reviewed by others involved in the design process, i.e. a common vocabulary and understanding of learning activities. •
It provides a method by which lesson or learning designs can be reused, as opposed to just sharing content.
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It can guide individuals through the process of creating new learning activities.
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It has the potential to aid learners and tutors in complex activities by guiding them through the activity sequence.
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It helps create an audit trail of academic (and production) design decisions.
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Another way to highlight the benefits of Learning Design is to draw an analogy between learning design and music; In the history of music there was a time long ago when some people argued it was impossible to write down music – music was too special, too ethereal – to ever be reduced to written form.
However, over many years the Western music tradition slowly developed a notational system for describing and sharing musical ideas. This standard format allowed great musical ideas to be shared from one musician to another without a need for personal contact.
As a result, a musician living hundreds of years later, in a very different context, can still understand the musical ideas of a composer long ago, and with appropriate skills, can reproduce those musical ideas.
Music notation does not capture everything about musical ideas – there remains a significant role for performers to bring their own interpretations to music. But musical notation contains enough information to convey musical ideas from one person to another over time and space.
Music notation does not guarantee beautiful music – indeed, mediocre music can be written down just as precisely as beautiful music. Music notation allows for many different styles of music to be described using a single notational framework. And while the Western notational framework is sufficiently broad to describe many types of music, it contains limitations that make some kinds of music (e.g., quartertone singing) difficult to describe within the standard format.
The purpose of creating musical notation was not simply the abstract concept of music representation; rather, it was a vehicle for conveying great musical ideas to others. This sharing helps other musicians to learn the crafts of performance and composition, as well as enriching countless lives who listen to music that they would never have heard if it had not been written down many years ago.
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What are effective learning sequences? “The order in which material is presented can strongly influence what is learned, how fast performance increases, and sometimes even whether the material is learned at all.�
What is a learning sequence? Learning sequences make up the structure of our lessons and include the range of activities (such as assessment, discussion, simulation, etc.) performed by students and teachers within the given educational environment.
The use of a learning sequence involves directing student attention toward specific learning in a highly structured environment. It is teaching that is focused on producing specific learning outcomes. Topics and contents are broken down into small parts and taught individually. It involves explanation, demonstration and practise. Students are provided with guidance and structured frameworks. Topics are taught in a logical order and directed by the teacher.
The most effective learning sequences move systematically from extensive teacher input and little student responsibility initially — to total student responsibility and minimal teacher involvement at the conclusion of the learning cycle.
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Examples of effective learning sequences Effective learning sequences usually increase gradually in difficulty, beginning with simpler tasks and moving to more challenging tasks. For example, asking students to locate the principle within simple models before locating it within complex models, or to generate pieces of a principle before generating the whole thing.
Using the learning sequence means less teacher directed learning and more student-dominated activity and discussion whereby students are much more likely to understand and remember the material.
The list below includes a range of pedagogically informed learning sequences. More information about each can be found using a web search. •
Think Pair Share
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Predict Observe Explain
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Pre-test Classroom experience Post-test
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Reflect Evaluate Action-Plan
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Bloom’s Taxonomy
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Draft Agree Show Listen Evaluate Refine
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Predict Argue Check Explain
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Six thinking hats
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Reciprocal teaching
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Directed Reading Thinking Activity
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How do effective learning sequences benefit teaching? Opperamann (1997, p2) describes the notion of good learning systems as those that can match learner characteristics, maximise interaction, be individualised, maintain positive learner interest, be able to produce a variety of feedback and evaluate performance appropriately.
By considering the sequence of activities throughout a lesson and mapping tasks effectively, the following can be achieved; •
Student engagement – interesting, enjoyable and active learning.
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Catering for a wide range of student abilities and learning styles.
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A wide range of teaching techniques and ubiquitous use of technology.
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Addresses relevant course outcomes and links to unit – Assessment.
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Student Management issues are managed and addressed.
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Teacher monitoring, feedback, praise and reinforcement are more frequent and effective.
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Questioning techniques and effective communication.
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Physical layout for the activity and resource requirements are planned.
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What is Lesson LAMS? “LAMS is a tool for designing, managing and delivering online collaborative learning activities. It provides teachers with a highly intuitive visual authoring environment for creating sequences of learning activities.�
What is LAMS?
LAMS is a revolutionary new tool for designing, managing and delivering online collaborative learning activities. The website contains existing lesson plans and everything you need to create your own, and then provide access to your students. For student access, each lesson plan has its own URL, and you can create individual student accounts or provide a unique code for student self-registration.
LAMS provides teachers with a highly intuitive visual authoring environment for creating sequences of learning activities. These activities can include a range of individual tasks, small group work and whole class activities based on both content and collaboration. LAMS can be used as a stand-alone system or in combination with other learning management systems such as Moodle, Sakai, .LRN, WebCT and BlackBoard.
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LAMS provides teachers with a visual authoring environment for creating, storing and re-using sequences of learning activities. Teachers drag and drop activities into the authoring interface and then join the activities together to produce a learning sequence. This workflow model is what principally distinguishes LAMS from other more content based LMS by providing teachers and learners with sequences of activities with a high level of interactivity and collaboration. LAMS has a wide range of tools designed to be used for a range of pedagogical approaches, by teachers and students with varying levels of technical expertise.
The video below provides an introduction to LAMS; http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mbFQaPB2PSM
Benefits to Schools and Teachers There are many key benefits to using LAMS, here are just a few: •
Showcase and share good teaching and learning.
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Ongoing Professional development for both experienced and beginning teachers – Mentoring.
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Reflect on teaching and learning practices for beginning and experienced teachers.
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Evaluation reports on the use of LAMS report that teachers find LAMS easy to use and that LAMS also helps them reflect more deeply on their teaching practice.
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Students love LAMS! Evaluation reports consistently note that students find LAMS and ICT very motivating.
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LAMS fosters greater student engagement - in one evaluation, only 16% of students were willing to discuss ideas in the classroom, however, via the collaboration facility within LAMS, over 83% were willing to discuss their ideas.
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LAMS incorporates single learner content (such as Learning Objects) as well as collaborative tasks such as discussion, voting and debate.
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LAMS allows educators to capture, share and adapt digital lesson plans based on "best practice processes".
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LAMS provides rich, real-time student monitoring and tracking facilities.
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LAMS has a large community of teachers, educators and technical developers that share LAMS best-practices and designs as well as foster future version of the system.
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LAMS aims to be a well-documented project, on the technical side as well as the educational.
Learning LAMS by using LAMS These lessons, written in LAMS, will guide you through all you need to know in order to use LAMS. •
Lesson 1: What is LAMS? http://lamscommunity.org/lamscentral/preview?ld_id=515
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Lesson 2: The LAMS Environments. http://lamscommunity.org/lamscentral/preview?ld_id=4484
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Lesson 3: The LAMS Activities. http://lamscommunity.org/lamscentral/preview?ld_id=4430
There are a range of tutorials that discuss each of the individual components and activities possible in LAMS located here. http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lamsdocs/LAMS+Tutorials 9
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How is LAMS used to deliver effective learning sequences? “There are three main environments that facilitate learning in LAMS; The Authoring environment, the Learning environment and the Monitoring environment.�
The Authoring Environment The Authoring Environment is where sequences are put together, modified and shared. It contains all of the LAMS activities, and is where authors create their lesson designs.
The Authoring Environment provides teachers and instructors with a visual authoring environment for creating, storing and re-using of learning activities. To create sequences, you drag-and-drop activities onto the learning space, and then create transitions to specify the path that learners take through the sequences. This Graphic Workflow Model is what principally distinguishes LAMS from other, more content based, Learning Management Systems by providing teachers with a high level of interactivity and collaboration.
Further information is available here. http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lamsdocs/Authoring+Environment
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Sequence management tools
Authoring Space – Activities are placed in sequence
Activity tools
Figure 1. The LAMS Authoring Environment The LAMS activities are grouped into four categories of learning; • •
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Informative Collaborative
Assessment Reflective
Activities make up the content of the learning sequence and any number of activities can be dragged into the Authoring environment to create a lesson, for example, the learning sequence below could be created using the following activities; Learning Sequence LAMS Sequence
Predict
Observe
Explain
Survey
Noticeboard
Share Resources
Ask students to make a prediction.
Show students a video demonstrating result.
Students search for and post resources explaining the result.
The Predict – Argue – Check – Explain sequence used during the workshop is located at; http://www.lessonlams.com/sdnwkk
Code: 3n4s
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The Learning Environment The Learning Environment is the ’doing’ of LAMS. This is what Learners will see when they log in to LAMS and start participating in a sequence. The Learning Environment displays the sequences that are created in Authoring.
Figure 2. The LAMS Learning Environment
Students are directed to the first activity presented in the sequence and navigate through activities by double clicking the ‘Next Activity’ button on the page. Once tasks have been completed, students can review tasks by using the menu on the left hand side of the screen.
Student progress can be regulated through the sequence using stop gates, which can be opened by completing a previous activity or at a time set by the teacher.
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The Monitoring Environment Monitors are not necessarily the people who authored the sequence in the first place - they simply run the lesson for learners, and supervise each learner’s progress through the lesson. In practice, teachers are often both authors and monitors for their class of students.
Figure 3. The LAMS Monitoring Environment
The monitoring environment is used to view student responses throughout all activities. It is also a platform for reviewing student work, collecting assessment data, providing feedback and record keeping.
The monitoring environment is also used to modify the settings, including instant messaging between students, class status and permission gate access. It can also be used to access a list of all learners subscribed to the sequence.
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Description of LAMS activities. “The LAMS activities are grouped into four categories of learning; Informative, Collaborative, Assessment and Reflective.�
LAMS Activities Below is a list of all activities available in LAMS. Each icon is a link to a video tutorial describing how to use each of the tools. A list of all tutorials is located at the address below. http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lamsdocsfr/Activities
The Assessment tool allows authors to create a series of questions with a high degree flexibility in total weighting.
Learners to populate.
The Data Collection tool allows Authors to create database style lists for
The Chat Activity runs a live (synchronous) discussion for learners.
The Web Conferencing Activity provides a simple way to integrate Big Blue Button web conferences into a LAMS sequence.
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The Forum Activity provides an asynchronous discussion environment for learners, with discussion threads initially
The Google Maps activity allows sequence Authors to create maps or satellite images with annotated place markers. During the activity, Learners can add their own markers to the map and view markers placed by other learners.
The Image Gallery tool allows authors and learners to upload a series of images to LAMS, review & rate them.
The new Mindmap activity allows Teachers and Learners to create, edit and view mindmaps.
The Multiple Choice activity allows teachers to create simple automated assessment questions, including multiple choice and true/false questions.
The Notebook Activity is a tool for learners to record their thoughts during a sequence.
The Noticeboard Activity provides a simple way of providing information and content to the learners.
Pixlr is a powerful online flashbased image editor that can be included as a LAMS activity. The editor has powerful image creation and editing features, and the interface will be familiar to anyone who has used Paint, or more advanced editors like Photoshop.
The Question and Answer Activity allows teachers to pose questions to learners who then see the responses of all their peers presented on a single answer screen.
The Scribe Activity is, by default, not enabled as a stand-alone activity, but is used in 'dual-screen' roles, such as with a Chat, Forum or Submit Files activity.
This tool allows learners to add content into a sequence, such as URL hyperlinks, zipped websites, individual files and even complete learning objects.
The Spreadsheet Activity allows a sequence author to provide data in a spreadsheet format to
Learners.
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The Submit Files Activity allows learners to submit one or more files to the LAMS server for review by a teacher. The teacher can then input grades into the system based on these files, which can then be viewed by the learners.
The Survey Tool is similar to Multiple Choice, in that it presents learners with a number of questions fir responses. However, unlike Multiple Choice there are no right or wrong answers - the system just collates all answers for analysis by the teacher.
The Task List activity allows authors to create a series of tasks which are marked off as completed by Learners. Each individual task may be compulsory or not, or require the completion of other tasks to become available.
The LAMS Video Recorder tool allows authors to record instructions for their learners and embed them into a sequence.
The Voting Activity allows teachers to provide learners with a list of options to "Vote" on.
The Wiki Tool allows for authors to create content pages that can link to each other and, optionally, allow Learners to make collaborative edits to the content provided.
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Sequence Management Tools Below are the tools used to manage student workflow through the lesson sequence. Flow Tools The flow tool provides options for controlling the progress of Learners through the sequence.
Sequence Gates, (Stop Points)
Branching Tool
Grouping Tool This tool creates a grouping object, which arranges learners into groups for particular activities. (ie: instead of a whole class of learners participating in one chat, there can be several groups of five learners in independent chats.)
Grouping Tool
Optional Activity Tools This tool changes the pointer into Optional mode (indicated by a Purple pen). Click the Optional command, then click the Authoring space to place the Optional box. You then drag existing activities from the authoring space or new activities from the Toolkit into the box.
Optional Activities and Sequences
Support Activities
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Creating and Running lesson sequences. “ The LAMS Community allows teachers to share and adapt digital lesson plans, and discuss their experiences of using LAMS. Teachers, trainers and academics can find digital lessons plans that are freely available to use and adapt, and they can share their own creations and adaptations to the benefit of all education..�
Creating a lesson sequence A lesson is created in the Authoring environment where activities and management tools are dragged and dropped into a sequence. Transitions are then added before the sequence may be saved and previewed. A range of lesson templates are available or you can choose to build a lesson from scratch. To begin creating a lesson, navigate to www.lessonlams.com
Choose to Log in as an existing user or Sign-up as a new user.
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This is the Home screen showing the most recently viewed sequence. • Action buttons for most recent sequence are directly below. • ‘Create your own’ or ‘Browse Templates’ buttons to the right. • Saved and recently viewed sequences at bottom of screen. To begin, click ‘Create your own’
This is the Authoring Environment • Drag and drop activities into the authoring space. • Link each activity using the ‘Transition’ tool.
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For optional activities, click the ‘Optional’ tool then drag and drop the ‘Activity’ tool.
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You can then drag and drop activities into the newly created box. To change the properties of the optional or sequential activities, select the desired activity and open the ‘Properties’ tab at the bottom of the screen. Here you can rename activities and set the number of compulsory activities in the optional activities range.
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To add content to each activity, double click the activity box to open the activity author. •
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The authoring screen and options will depend on the activity chosen. Content can be typed in rich text or html code. Click ‘Save’ to save and close the box.
To preview your lesson, first save your sequence then click ‘Preview’. • Each activity can be completed and tested to ensure accuracy and fluency.
You can save and come back to your lesson by logging in and clicking ‘Full Author’. • You can preview any lesson by navigating to the home page and clicking ‘Preview’ • To give students access to your lesson and begin running content, click ‘Launch’ • Once a lesson is launched, there are limited opportunities to make changes and you must make them before students begin the activity to be edited.
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Using Existing lesson sequences You can search the LAMS Community database for lessons shared by other users. These lessons can be used as they are or edited to suit the needs of the teacher. You can also save your lessons in the shared folder so they may be accessed by your peers or other teachers around the globe.
To begin, from the Home page, click ‘Create your own’
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In the Authoring environment, click ‘File’ from the Sequence Management Tools. Then click ‘Open’.
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In the Dialogue box, open the folder named Public. Browse the lessons and public folders for the desired lesson. Click ‘Open’ to import the lesson into the authoring environment.
From here you can Save and preview the lesson or edit by moving unwanted items to the rubbish bin and double clicking activities to revise the content.
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Student access to the lesson sequence Students participate in lessons by using the URL given to the teacher when a lesson is launched. Along with the URL is a unique code that students must also use to access the lesson.
Students will be taken to the first activity in the sequence so it is a good idea to use the Noticeboard tool to provide an introduction to the lesson. Students use the ‘Next Activity’ button to navigate through the content and can use the flow chart on the left of the screen to navigate back to activities already completed.
Students enter the URL into their browser and are asked to enter a code and click ‘Submit’. They are then prompted to Log in or Register before access to the Learning Environment is provided.
The first activity is presented in the Learning environment and students can navigate through content using the ‘Next Activity’ button or the menu on the left.
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Assessment, Monitoring, Feedback and Analysis. “Whatever you sow, you reap and for a teacher, feedback is like a seed sown into the mind of a student.”
Assessment There are a range of activities in LAMS that can be used for student assessment, depending on the form of response you would like students to prepare. Some activities can be used to selfmark the student response and others can require students to submit their own files. The teacher has the opportunity to provide feedback on student responses and even send a file back to the student.
Student assessment, monitoring and feedback all occur in the Monitoring Environment. From the Home page, click on the ‘Run/Monitor Lesson’ tab to access all lessons. The lesson URL and code can also be accessed from this page. To monitor the lesson, click the ‘View’ button in the Student Progress column for the desired lesson. 23
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Monitoring and Feedback From the Monitoring environment, you can view student progress and give feedback on task responses. There are two methods of following student progress;
Click ‘Learners’ to see student progress through each activity. Here you can double click each activity to see the individual student response to the task or download their response. •
This method cannot be used to mark or give feedback on
Click ‘Sequence’ to view every students work for each activity by double clicking the activity within the sequence. •
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Here you can mark student work, download student marks and provide feedback for each activity. It is also possible to send each student a file as part of the feedback given for their submission.
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Analysis and record keeping After double clicking an activity in the Sequence tab (in the Monitoring environment) an option to ‘Download Marks’ is available. This tool enables you to export an Excel spreadsheet which can be used to analyse results.
The exported data includes student details, marks and feedback and can therefore be used for reporting and record keeping.
When using the Assessment activity (as well as the Multiple Choice, Survey, Voting and Data Collection activities) student results can be analysed in detail, either question by question or as individual student responses. The data collected includes; •
Average marks
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Total marks per student
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Time taken to complete tasks
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Question type
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Student responses
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Penalty imposed
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Student marks per question
Average Mark Question by Question.
Default mark
Agree
Neutral
Disagree 7%
0%
20%
Question 15.
Question 13.
Question 11.
Question 9.
Question 7.
Question 5.
Question 3.
Analysis of student responses in Assessment
Strongly Agre Strongly Disagree
Average mark Question 1.
4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0
I found the theoretical experiences throughout this unit worthwhile.
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46%
Analysis of student responses in Survey activity.
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Further Reading LAMS user documentation – tutorial videos and activity explanations. http://www.lamsfoundation.org/ LAMS Community – Forum for technical support and sharing resources. http://www.lamscommunity.org LAMS International – Library of documentation relating to LAMS and learning design. http://www.lamsinternational.com/
For further assistance or advice, please feel free to email me, Matt Stephens at; stephensm@knox.nsw.edu.au
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