Developing familiarity with learning design tools through subject analysis

Abstract

The application of quality processes to tertiary teaching can result in a moreteam-based approach to course curriculum planning, the instructional designof individual subjects or units, the learning support associated with subjectimplementation and subsequent evaluation. The “art” of teaching requiresmore explicit communication within and across different teams that may beinvolved in each stage. Learning designs provide tools for design teams tomap out learning environment attributes such as resources, tasks, people andinteractions. Experienced teaching academics, unfamiliar with such tools,require orientation to them to achieve their communication potential. Oneway to introduce learning design models is to apply them to past subjects astools for analysis. Do they help identify design imbalance? Do they provide ascaffold for thinking about future subject design? Four simple local designmodels are explored as potential analysis tools and applied to a subject casestudy taught prior to the lecturer’s awareness of these design models.