How to design Collaborative learning activities

A hands-on workshop exploring tools and techniques for designing
successful online collaborative learning activities
http://www.mentis-project.org/
How to design Collaborative Learning activities

• Context
• Today’s activities
• Tools and techniques to support you
• Your knowledge
Our knowledge as facilitators
“Learning design is the act of devising new practices, plans of activity, resources and tools
aimed at achieving particular educational aims in a given situation” (METIS project, 2012)
Your goal: to design a collaborative online activity that will form part of your module
A1: Introduction

A1: Metis project
Istituto Tecnologie
Didattiche
3
contexts
HEVocational TrainingNon-formal training
Learning
design
expertise

Two strands
1. How to represent teaching practice from a technical perspective in the
development and delivery of online learning environments;
and
2. how to represent teaching practice in an appropriate form to enable
teachers to share ideas about innovative online pedagogy and think
about the process of design.
Agostinho, S., Bennett, S., Lockyer, L., & Harper, B. (2011). The future of learning design. Learning, Media and
Technology, 36(2), 97-99. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2011.553619
A1: Learning design

Learning design at the OUA1: Background
/ Learning design

A1: Overview of today’s activities
Conceptualize /
Re-conceptualize
AuthorImplement
Investigate / Re-investigate
Evaluate
Introduction
Work on/with ideas for design,
e.g. creation of representations of
design elements and their
interconnections, understanding
of the context and expected users
Produce a prototype: a detailed,
formal and reusable definition of a
learning design
Apply an authored learning
design using a specific VLE,
a particular group of
students and set of tools

• Conceptualize
• Author
• Implement
Integrated Learning Design Environment http://ilde.upf.edu
A1: METIS tools
Learning Design
Project
Evaluate

Activity
Learning
outcome
Tool
Resource
Learner’s
work
A1: Paper prototyping tools

• The ILDE is located here http://ilde.upf.edu/ou
– Login using your username and password
• Design projects have been set up for you:
– DD103 Investigating the social world - Block 3
– DD103 Investigating the social world - Block 4
– DE200 Investigating Psychology 2
A1: Using the ILDE

1. Individually, write down 3 (or more ways) to ensure that an
activity you are designing will fail! Write each on an individual
Post-It (5 minutes);
2. As a team, place all your Post-Its on a sheet of A1 paper and
structure them in a way that seems useful (e.g. by themes or
arrange into a map) (10 minutes);
A2: How to ruin a collaborative learning
activity (15 minutes)

What are the barriers and challenges of collaborative learning from a
learner’s perspective?
ILDE Heuristic Evaluation template
• Technical challenges?
• Motivational challenges?
• Temporal challenges?
• Other challenges and barriers?
Personas
A3: Heuristics for collaborative learning
(25 minutes)
Examples of heuristics

1. Individually, think about how you would avoid ruining a collaborative learning activity.
Write down 2 or more heuristics (guidelines or ‘rules of thumb’) that a collaborative
activity should adhere to for your particular teaching and learning context.
Write each heuristic on a separate Post-it. (5 minutes)
2. Collaborate with the others on your team by placing your Post-Its on an A1 page.
Arrange them in some order or map, and identify a few key guidelines or heuristics
that you believe a successful collaborative learning activity should follow.
One member of the team should add the heuristics to your Heuristic Evaluation page
within the ILDE (15 minutes)
3. Each team will then present its heuristics to the whole workshop. Please focus on
describing the key heuristics as you will only have 3 minutes to present! (10 minutes
in total)
A3: Heuristics for collaborative learning
(25 minutes)
ILDE Heuristic Evaluation template
Personas
Examples of heuristics

• Describe your vision for a
collaborative learning
activity.
• Focus on describing the
effects the activity is
intended to have on the
learners.
A4: Conceptualize learning outcomes (40
minutes)

The Learning Outcomes view is a
notational view which shows how
the learning activities and
assessment tasks are aligned with
the intended learning outcomes of
the course or module. The view is
informed by Biggs’ work on
Constructive Alignment (Biggs,
1999). The premise behind this
model is twofold:
• Students construct meaning from
what they do to learn
• The teacher aligns the planned
learning activities with the
learning outcomes
Biggs, J. (1999). What the Student Does: teaching for enhanced
learning. Higher Education Research & Development, 18(1), 57-75.
doi: 10.1080/0729436990180105
A4: Learning Outcomes View

• Describe your vision for a collaborative learning activity. Focus on describing the effects
the activity is intended to have on the learners.
Learning outcomes view
1. Listen to the introduction to the Learning Outcomes View and this activity (2 minutes)
2. As individuals, each write down one or more learning outcomes for a collaborative
learning activity, each on a separate Learning Outcome Post-it. (Make use of supplied
verbs). (3 minutes)
3. As a team, collaborate to choose and refine one or more learning outcomes that your
activity will produce (10 minutes)
4. As individuals, each write down one or more outputs a learner could produce to show
that they have reached one or more of these outcomes. Use a separate Learner Output
Post-it for each output. (5 minutes)
5. As a team, collaborate to choose and refine the definition of the learner outputs (10
minutes)
6. As a team, collaborate to produce a Learning Outcomes View on an A1 sheet of paper,
illustrating the relationships between learners' outputs and learning outcomes (10
minutes)
minutes)

• Describe your vision for a collaborative learning activity. Focus on
describing the effects the activity is intended to have on the learners.
Learning outcomes view
Learning outcome verbs and phrases
particularly relevant to collaboration
analyse, build on, co-create, contribute, debate with,
discuss with, engage with, enhance, improve on, motivate,
perform, share
……..and any others you can think of
minutes)

1. Listen to the presentations about the case studies and patterns. Whilst doing so,
think about if and how they could be applied to your teaching (35 minutes)
2. As individuals, think about which features of the examples and patterns could
be applied to your teaching context and used to support your learners reach the
learning outcomes you specified in Activity 4 “Conceptualize: Learning
outcomes”.
• Keep in mind the heuristics, and ways to ruin an activity you identified
earlier.
• Pick one or more of the patterns or case studies, and for your chosen one(s)
write down “pros” on green Post-Its, and “cons” on red Post-Its and attach
them to the relevant print out. (5 minutes);
3. As a team, use the annotated print outs as prompts to discuss and agree on
features of the patterns and examples that you can make use of.
Nominate a note taker to describe the pros and cons and other features you
think will be useful. There is a Google Document within your team’s project in
the ILDE for this purpose. (20 minutes).
A5: Evidence, examples and patterns of
collaborative learning (60 minutes)
ILDE Google Document

A5: Evidence, examples and patterns of
collaborative learning (60 minutes)
ILDE Google Document
Use the ‘Notes on examples and patterns’ document within your ILDE project
to describe the pros and cons and other features you think will be useful

A6: Conceptualize: Storyboard
(45 minutes)

A6: Conceptualize: Storyboard
(45 minutes)
1. Listen to the introduction to the Storyboard view (5 minutes);
2. Collaborate to layout your storyboard (25 minutes);
Issues/questions to think about include:
a. Which parts of the activity should be synchronous, and which should
be asynchronous?
b. Which pattern(s) can be used to help support your planned
collaboration?
c. Which tools have the right affordances for your activity?
Remember to reflect on the heuristics you created in Activity 3 and use
them to guide your design. (You can also check it against other teams’
heuristics in the ILDE).
3. Present your storyboard to the workshop (15 minutes, about 5 minutes
per team).

• A prototype is a way of demonstrating how a design will work.
Not the final product, but enough to clarify the functionality and technical issues for meeting the
user requirements.
• Author: Use WebCollage to produce a detailed, formal and reusable prototype of a learning design
(by Daniel Y. Go) (by Zach Hoeken)
WebCollage
A7: Author - using WebCollage
(45 minutes)

A7: Author (45 minutes)
1. Listen to the introduction to WebCollage (10 minutes);
This introduction will demonstrate some features of WebCollage.
2. Given that there is limited time available for this activity, you may
want to select a portion of your storyboard to author – the facilitators
will help you with this. (5 minutes);
3. Use WebCollage to select the pattern that is most relevant to the
storyboard. (5 minutes);
4. Customise the pattern to produce the first stage authored sequence.
User of WebCollage thinks-aloud during creation while other
participants feed in suggestions based on role. (15 minutes);
5. Note any issues related to your role in the Google document within
your team’s ILDE project (5 minutes);
6. Finalise the WebCollage prototype for presentation. (10 minutes)

• WebCollage instructions
ILDE guidance
WebCollage
A7: Author (45 minutes)

Heuristic evaluation originates in usability research, as a technique for
early formative evaluation of digital systems. A team of experts is
asked to assess a particular design using a given set of heuristics or
“rules of thumb”.
• a low-fidelity rapid evaluation which often uncovers design flaws at
an early stage.
• a group of experts “walk through” the evaluated system as if they
were users (learners) engaged in a typical activity.
• The experts use a set of design heuristics - “rules of thumb” against
which they are asked to assess their experience.
A8: Heuristic evaluation (35 minutes)

Heuristic evaluation guidance Heuristic evaluation template
Other team’s design Other team’s heuristics
1. As a team, select a view or representation of your design that summarises its features. For
example, you could choose WebCollage’s ‘Summary View’, or your Storyboard (5 minutes);
2. Make your chosen representation available to another team, i.e. display the selected ILDE view
on your team’s monitor or display the storyboard (5 minutes);
3. One group from your team should carry out a heuristic evaluation of another team’s design,
using the heuristics provided, and bearing in mind all the heuristics identified in this
workshop. Fill in the scoring sheet within the heuristic evaluation document to summarise your
findings. . (10 minutes)
4. Each group of evaluators will present its evaluation to the workshop
(you will have about 5 minutes per group, so lead with the most important points)
(15minutes)
A8: Heuristic evaluation (45 minutes)

A9: Wrap up (15 minutes)
http://www.itd.cnr.it/Metis/questionnaire.html

http://www.itd.cnr.it/Metis/questionnaire.html
A10: Evaluation

(Photo by
Daniel
Slaughter)
Slides put together by Andrew Brasher, with help from Patrick McAndrew, Yishay Mor, Christopher Walsh,
Rebecca Galley, Simon Cross. Based on templates prepared by the Metis Project.
McAndrew, P., Brasher, A., Prieto, L., & Rudman, P. (2013). METIS deliverable D3.3 Pilot workshops: workshops for different educational
levels. Retrieved 1/7/2014, from http://www.metis-project.org/resources/deliverables/METIS_D3-3.pdf
Brasher, A., Walsh, C., McAndrew, P., & Mor, Y. (2013). METIS deliverable D3.2: Draft of pilot workshop. Retrieved 27/9/2013, 2013,
from http://www.metis-project.org/resources/deliverables/METIS_D3-2.pdf

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