Activity: 20 mins Strategies for design

Gráinne Conole
10:21am 30 June 2009 (Edited 11:02am 10 October 2009)

Sharing and discussion - Olnet Design Workshop: 30th June 2009

• How many of you used an open resource? Some yes, but not necessarily an OER
• Mainly resources created by the individual
• About half used some form of graphically representation, mainly unsuccessfully, kind of maps, a number of people used just text
• What is design? There are many interpretations of this…
• Example: Online academic literacies support; wanted to show that functionally it was up to the students when and how they used it, found this difficult to represent
• Example: Step by step sequence of activities. A design which had an implicit sequence was much easier to represent
• Some people tend to think textually rather than visually
• Example: the resource is a design itself and a representation of that – bullet point and diagram
• Example: A model for students, website for supporting module activities; showed the objectives and the resources available, have a quiz + theoretical content and assignment + practical exercises; a map of the course
• No single way of representing designs
  Text, temporal diagrams, maps, etc
• Some represented a static map of the contents or elements, others represented the temporal sequence
• Some attempted to represent the objectives of the course – why
• Value of dialogue to explain things and question and answer coupled to represented design (ie text and or diagrams)
• Some described the principles and pedagogy
• Some specified whether design was individual or collaborative
• Many elements to design – what are the elements and what did you use to explain to your partner – were they mainly content, objectives, principles, what are the essential things you needed to represent
• Did you understand what your partner was describing, what else would you need to better understand it?

Conclusion

• Many different ways of representing and understanding a resource
  Many different element we can represent
  What elements do people expose to explain a resource
  This can link to reuse of the resource, the better I understand it the more likely it is I can reuse it
  This exercise could be done differently – interrogate individuals and ask them their opinion
  This exercise is a pattern! Think-pair-share
  
  

Patrick McAndrew
10:39am 30 June 2009

Resource generated by exercise:
 - difficult to represent the way in which there is a lot of choices.

 - one activity with a sequence of steps for a learner. Represented as bullet-points.
 - bullet points plus existing graphic to represent design.
 - website to support module so design records the areas of the site and the main resources that are available. Like a map.

Conclusions -
not a single way to represent, static maps, temporal sequence, some attempt to explain objectives and why, course principles were described, collaborative and individual.
Many different elements can be included - some of these may be the essentials that needs to be communicated.

Many different ways to understand
What are the different elements that get written down
What is explained by the other person
What extra information is needed to help understand.

Q? What about personalisation and adaptation. A. This is something that you could include ... anda couple of people did.

Niall Winters
12:51pm 30 June 2009 (Edited 11:51am 18 September 2009)

My design of a resource can be found here: http://bit.ly/QC5lw

Gráinne Conole
11:07am 10 October 2009

Niall have added your design from the workshop as a link here. Thanks for posting this!