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Trajectories of e-learning
Professor Gráinne Conole
Director of the Institute of Learning Innovation
University of Leicester
Email: grainne.conole@le.ac.uk
Blog: http://e4innovation.com
Slideshare: http:// http://www.slideshare.net/GrainneConole/
Departmental website: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-
research-alliance
Third International Conference On Quality Assurance in Post-Secondary
Education, Damman, Saudi Arabia
27th – 29th April 2013
Abstract
This paper will critique the affordances (Gibson 1979) that social and
participatory media offer in terms of promoting different forms of interaction
and communication. It will explore in particular the nature of digital identity and
presence. It will argue that there is a complex interconnection between us and
the digital environment we inhabit, and that this relationship is constantly
changing and adapting. In terms of harnessing this for learning, teachers need to
develop a complex set of digital literacies (Jenkins 2009) and need to adopt new
approaches to design that go beyond content to the activities that learners
engage with. It will conclude with a description of the 7Cs of Learning Design
framework, which aims to help teachers make more informed design decisions
that are pedagogically effective and make innovative uses of new technologies.
It will describe a set of theoretical constructs that can be used to describe and
understand our interactions online: the notion of digital identity and presence
and digital performance, our evolving rhizomatic digital network, harnessing the
affordances and new media and the associated digital social milieu, and the
nature of our digital traces and the associated digital panoptican.
Introduction
Clearly technologies offer a rich variety of ways in which learners can interact,
communicate and collaborate. They can support a variety of different
pedagogical approaches from independent learning to inquiry learning to
dialogic learning. Einstein once said that education is not the learning of facts,
but the training of the mind to think. Good teaching fosters the following aspects
of learning:
Encourages reflection

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Enables dialogue
Fosters collaboration
Applies theory to practice
Creates a learner community of peers
Encourages creativity
Motivates the learner.
Social and participatory media have a number of key characteristics that make
them distinctive from the so-called web 1.0 technologies (Conole and Alevizou
2010). These include: open practices, distributed cognition, networking and
interconnection, complex and evolving interactions, and the development of a
personalised digital landscape. These characteristics enable us to interact with
others on an unprecedented global scale.
Developing the digital literacy (Jenkins 2009) skills needed to be part of this
‘participatory culture’ is a key challenge facing education today. These skills are
way beyond simple notions of ICT literacies and are more about harnessing the
affordances of social and participatory media. Skills like: play, transmedia
navigation, judgement, and distributed cognition. The extent to which an
individual has these skills will impact on how they interact with others through
these media. Rheingold1 argues that social media enable people to socialise,
organise, learn, play, and engage in commerce. The part that makes social media
social is that technical skills need to be exercised in concert with others:
encoding, decoding, and community. He identifies five social media literacies:
attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness and critical
consumption.
1 http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/attention-and-other-21st-century-social-media-
literacies

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Today’s digital landscape
Figure 1: The E-learning timeline
Figure 1 shows the key technological developments that have emerged over the
last thirty years. Starting with multimedia authoring tools like Tookbook and
Authorware in the late eighties, which enabled users to create rich and
interactive multimedia resources. The Internet emerged in 1993 and was
initially a very static interface, unable to handle large amounts of images or
multimedia because of poor bandwidth. In the mid-nineties, practitioners started
to talk about the notion of learning objects (which were precursors to the
concept of Open Educational Resources) and the aspiration to create and share
learning materials in a vibrant educational marketplace or digital economy
(Littlejohn 2003).
At about the same time Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) /Learning
Management Systems (LMSs) started to appear. These were significant in two
respects. Firstly, institutions started to realise that technologies were core for
their learners and established committees to evaluate different VLEs/LMSs and
to instigate VLE/LMS policies. Secondly, they mimicked established teaching
practice and hence provided a safe nursery slope for practitioners to experiment.
Practitioners could upload content, make announcements, set up discussion
forums and provide mechanisms for their students to upload assignments. The
first generation of mobile devices emerged in around 1998; although they had
very limited capacity and it was hard to see what they could offer for learning.
Learning Design2 emerged as a research field as a counteraction to the long
established field of Instructional Design. The focus was on the creation of tools
and resources to help practitioners make more informed design decisions.
Around 2000 gamification emerged and in particular how games could be used
in a learning context (de Freitas and Maharg 2011). The Open Educational
2 http://larnacadeclaration.org

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Resource (OER) movement took the ideas around Learning Objects a stage
further in 2001. Promoted by organisations like UNESCO and the Flora and
William Hewlett Foundation, a core principle was that education is a
fundamental human right and that educational materials should be freely
available. UNESCO estimate that there are more than 100 million people who
cannot afford formal education; OER offer them a means of getting an education.3
O’Reilly defined the term ‘web 2.0’ to distinguish the emerging tools and
practices associated with the web, which were more participatory, social and
participatory (O'Reilly 2004; O'Reilly 2005). This term morphed into the term
‘social and participatory’ media, which is a central focus of this paper.
Virtual worlds, such as Secondlife, gained popularity in around 2005; many
believed they offered immersive and authentic 3D environments, which could
promote pedagogies such as role play, Problem-Based learning and situated
learning (Childs and Peachey 2011). This was followed by a second generation of
mobile devices; in particular e-books, tablets and smart phones. These made the
mantra of ‘learning anywhere, anytime’ a reality. Finally, the next phase in the
continuum of Learning Objects, Open Educational Resources (OER) was the
emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), with thousands of people
signing up to participate. Two distinct types of MOOCs have now evolved: i)
cMOOCs promoting connectivist learning (Siemens 2005) and ii) xMOOCs, which
are more linear and didactic, such as those offered by Coursera, Udacity, EdX and
most recently, Futurelearn.
So it is evident that technologies are transforming everything that we do. They
provide mechanisms to enable new forms of communication and collaboration,
along with providing rich multimedia presentation of information. There are
now a wealth of tools to find, create, manage and share knowledge. We are
operating in a networked, distributed, peer reviewed and open environment,
which is complex, dynamic and evolving.
Figure 2 provides a nice illustration of the relationship between different
technologies and traditional ways of communicating. So for example, LinkedIn
equates to a professional contacts list, wordpress to a reflective diary, and
Twitter to post it notes. Social and participatory media have a number of key
characteristics, such as: being open, distributed, networked, participatory, social,
complex, distributed and dynamic.
3 http://www.unesco.org/education/wef/en-conf/jomtien%20declaration%20eng.shtm

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Figure 2: Mapping technologies to traditional forms of communication4
The annual New Media Consortium Horizon reports5 list the technologies that
are likely to have the most impact in one, three and five years’ time. In the one-
year timeframe Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and tablets are listed as
having the most impact in education. In the three-year timeframe,
games/gamification and learning analytics will have the most impact. Finally, in
the five-year timeframe, 3D printing and wearable technologies will have the
most impact. A recent study6 looked at emergent technologies across four
sectors: schools, tertiary education, the Vocational and Training (VET) sector,
and adult education. They catagorised the use of technologies as follows:
Productivity and creativity
Networked collaboration
Content creation
Visualisation and simulation
Learning Management Systems
Learning environment
Games
Devices, interfaces and connectivity
4 http://wronghands1.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/vintage-social-networking/
5 http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2013-horizon-report-HE.pdf
6 http://www.menon.org/matel/

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So it is evident that technologies are having an increasing impact on education
and provide a variety of mechanisms for fostering communication and
collaboration, and to enable learners to interact with content. The next section
provides a meta-model of learning, which can be used to map how technologies
can be used to foster different elements of learning.
A meta-model for learning
Figure 3 shows the meta-model for learning (Conole, Dyke et al. 2004). The
model consists of three dimensions of learning:
Learning individually or learning sociably
Learning through information or through experience
Non-reflective versus reflective learning.
Figure 3: The meta-model of learning
Non-reflective learning needs unpacking. If I am driving across America, sub-
consciously I am learning about American culture. If I am sitting in a bar in Spain,
I am improving my Spanish through the conversations going on around me. It is
what Jarvis calls ‘pre-conscious’ learning (Jarvis 2004). The model can be used in
two ways. Firstly, as a means of mapping an activity using a particular tool. For
example a reflective blog would be individual, experience-based and reflective,
whereas a group blog aggregating resources for a course would be social,
information based and reflective. Secondly, it can be used to map different
pedagogical models. Jarvis’ notion of pre-conscious learning (Jarvis 2004) maps
to individual experience-based and non-reflective learning. Dewey’s reflective

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learning maps to individual, experience-based and reflective learning (Dewey
1916). Finally, Laurillard’s dialogic learning maps to social, information-based
and reflective learning (Laurillard 2002).
Four examples of how technologies can support different pedagogical
approaches are now provided: drill and practice, mobile learning, situative
learning, and immersive learning.
Drill and practice is an important approach to helping learners develop their
knowledge. It is important, for example, in language learning in terms of learning
vocabulary and conjugating verbs. There are now a range of tools to enable
learners to work through interactive materials and get feedback on assessment
of their learning. For example, the Open University, UK using Moodle as their
Learning Management System (LMS). They have developed an e-assessment tool
called OpenMark, more information about OpenMark and examples of how it can
be used are available online.7 The OU UK claim that OpenMark differs from other
e-assessment tools in the following ways:
The emphasis placed on feedback. All Open University students are
distance learners and the university emphasises the importance of giving
feedback on written assessments. The design of OpenMark assumes that
feedback, at multiple levels, will be included.
Allowing multiple attempts. OpenMark is an interactive system, and
consequently students are asked to act on feedback given 'there and then',
while the problem is still fresh in their mind. If their first answer is
incorrect, they can have an immediate second, or third, attempt.
The breadth of interactions supported. The OU aims to use the full
capabilities of modern multimedia computers to create engaging
assessments.
The design for anywhere, anytime use. OpenMark assessments are
designed to enable students to complete them in their own time in a
manner that fits with normal life. They can be interrupted at any point
and resumed later from the same location or from elsewhere on the
Internet.
There are now a rich range of sites to support language learning, which provide
learners with rich interactive multimedia resources, assessment and feedback
tools, and mechanisms to engage with other language learners. These include
livemoch,8 babble,9 duilingo,,10 and busuu.11
Mobile learning and the ability to learn anywhere, anytime is now a reality with
smart phones and tablet devices. At the University of Leicester, our Criminology
department has issued iPads to all their Masters’ students. These students are
working in dangerous parts of the world, where access to the Internet is often
7 http://www.open.ac.uk/openmarkexamples/
8 http://livemocha.com/
9 http://www.babbel.com/
10 http://duolingo.com
11 http://www.busuu.com/enc/

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limited. All the materials the students need for their course are available on the
iPads. Our Archeology department is using tablet with their students to enable
them to collect data when they are doing fieldwork. The Personal Inquiry project
developed a inquiry-based learning, derived from an extensive review of the
research literature. This formed the basis of a toolkit, the nQuire tookit, which
could be loaded on tablet devices and used by students as they undertook
inquiry-based learning whilst doing a Science investigation.
Virtual worlds, such as Secondlife, provide rich, authentic 3D environments,
which can be used to support role-play and situated learning. The Swift project12
developed a virtual Genetics laboratory in SecondLife, where students can learn
the basics of laboratory safety and also engage with virtual instruments to collect
data. The jibbigo App13 can be used on a mobile device to provide instant
translation of one language to another, both in text and audio.
Finally, in terms of immersive learning, Google have a tool called immersion,14
which translates parts of a web page into another language, you can oscillate
between the language you are learning and your native language by hovering
over the text.
The social milieu
The social environment, social context, socio-cultural context, or milieu, refers to
‘the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which
something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was
educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom they interact’.15
So the digital milieu is a combination of the affordances of new media and an
individual’s personal competences and preferences; each person has to find their
own ‘digital voice’ and personal digital environment. They need to be able to
navigate across the digital landscape; being clear about how different media are
used. So interactions in facebook will differ from those in Twitter or Virtual
Worlds. We each create our own ecological niche, we connect with different
people for different reasons; each of us has an inner core of ‘friends’ and an outer
set of acquaintances forming three different types of interactions, what Dron and
Anderson refer to as Groups, Networks and Collectives (Dron and Anderson
2007). Goffman in particular stresses the deeply social nature of the individual
environment and talks about the notion of ‘interaction rituals’ (Goffman 1976).
He talks about the concept of ‘performance’, the way in which we interact and
communicate with others online is a form of performance and relates to how we
are perceived by others; each of us has an individual digital identity, which is the
culmination of our interactions across different media.
12 http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance/projects/swift
13 http://www.jibbigo.com/
14 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/language-immersion-for-
ch/bedbecnakfcpmkpddjfnfihogkaggkhl?hl=en
15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_environment

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We leave visible digital trails as we interact online; a digital equivalent of
Foucault’s concept of the ‘Panopticon’ , which refers to the concept of a design
which allows a watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an
institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched
(Foucault 1995). In the digital landscape our identity is fragmented across
different media, we are connected in a complex set of social interactions with
others, ranging from loosely connected to tightly bound communities.
Digital identity and presence
Digital identity is about how you present yourself online and how others
perceive you. It emerges from the way you interact and communicate with
others. Weller (2011) argues that digital identity has the following facets:
reputation, impact, influence, productivity, and openness. Our professional
identity has changed as a result of our interactions online. In the past a research
paper published in a closed journal might only have a handful of readers. Articles
published online can be access by hundreds, if not thousands of people. And
there is a blurring of our personal and professional identity, particularly in sites
like facebook. Weller (2011) argues that:
A key element to realising a strong online identity is an attitude of
openness. This involved sharing aspects of personal life on social network
sites, blogging ideas rather than completing articles and engaging in
experiments with new media.
He goes on to argue (2011: 99) that digital identity is both distributed across
multiple channels as well as usually having a central place (such as a blog). And
he argues (2011: 136) that there are a number of facets associated with your
digital identity: reputation, impact, influence and productivity.
So what is presence? Dictionary definitions include: i) The state or fact of being
present; current existence or occurrence or ii) Immediate proximity in time or
space.16 Neither of these really captures what I understand by presence. I think it
is something more than this. This definition comes closer: ‘the bearing, carriage
or air of a person; especially stately or distinguished bearing’.17
I am interested in the difference between presence face-to-face and online. In a
face-to-face context presence is related to a number of factors. It’s about
someone’s aura, their stance. It might be that someone has presence because
they are tall, attractive, have a deep voice or it might be related to their intellect.
We have all experienced the feeling of being effected by someone, being very
aware of them, feeling a connection with them on a sub-conscious level.
In the digital world presence is very different, it is conveyed primarily through
text. Presence is channelled through your words and associated emoticons, etc. I
often wonder how I am perceived online. What people make of the things I say,
the pictures I post. What is my digital personality and how is it different from the
16 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Presence+(album)
17 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/presence

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way I interact face-to-face? I find online interactions liberating and different to
the interactions I have with people face to face.
Of course technology plays a part. The affordances of different media enable or
disenable certain types of interaction. So facebook is a good medium for sharing
multimedia, Twitter requires you to speak in a certain way, with its limit of 140
characters. Virtual worlds provide a bridge to face-to-face interaction, via your
avatar. The avatar you choose says something about you. Our digital presence is
fragmented across these different media. The collective self is a culmination of
these individual utterances. The way I speak on my blog is different to the
postings I put on facebook or Twitter. They have different purposes and
audiences. So what does ‘presence’ mean in a digital context? I think it is about
how you are perceived by others through your interaction with them. Presence
only has meaning in relation to others. It’s a social construct. For some people
you will have presence, for others you don’t. It is all to do with whether your
interactions have meaning for others.
Childs provides a useful overview of the concept of presence, along with related
terms (Childs 2013a; Childs 2013). He defines immersion as the ‘sense of feeling
submerged in an experience’. And goes on to suggest that immersion is
something that happens in your head; two people can experience the same
technology and one can feel immersed and the other one not, whereas for me
presence is more about the impact someone has on you. As I have already said, it
is socially constructed. I think this is closer to his use of the term ‘social
presence’, which he defines as ‘what we project when we’re in an online
environment about ourselves’. I think immersion has more to do with the sense
of ‘being there’, whether it is immersing your self in a book or a film or
participating in a Virtual World.
He uses the term presence to describe the sense of being there. In particular, he
suggests that presence is a combination of: mediated presence (“being there” aka
immersion) + social presence (projection of ourselves, perception of others) +
co-presence (being somewhere with others) + self-presence (or embodiment).
Collins argues that place and presence become mixed up online (Collins 2008).
She describes the ways in which we are digitally distributed:
So many places I’m in at once, and that’s just trying to keep things simple
– we’re not even including all the asynchronous options. But if you asked
me “Where are you right now?” the answer I’m likely to give depends on
context – if you called me on the telephone or sent me an SMS I’d say I
was at home, but if you IMd me the same question in Second Life, I’d say I
was in Chilbo, and if you asked me on Gtalk or AIM or Twitter, I don’t even
know which way I’d answer. BUT, the truth is, I’m am in all those places
and locations and “mental spaces” simultaneously – and yet it’s not
REALLY simultaneous because my attention can only be focused on one
“space” at a time.. Or is that really true?

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Moore (1989) lists three types of interaction: learner and teacher, learner and
learner, and learner and content. Hillman et al. (1994) add a fourth: learner and
interface.
Figure 4 shows the relationship between digital identity, interaction and
presence. The figure shows how our digital identity will inform how we interact
with others. For example, the degree to which we are formal or informal and the
extent to which we are open or closed in our discussions. This in turn will have
an impact on how we are perceived by others, i.e. our presence.
Figure 4: The relationship between digital identity, interaction and presence
Rhizomatic learning and connectivism
The nature of our personalised digital landscape or network is not static; it
changes over time; we are constantly adapting and co-evolving with the
technologies and through our network of peers. And as a result we develop, we
learn, we adapt. Two key concepts in relation to our interactions online are the
concepts of Rhizomatic learning (Cormier 2011) and Connectivism (Siemens
2005). In terms of Rhizomatic learning, Cormier argues that:
A rhizome is a stem of a plant that sends out roots and shoots as it
spreads. This is analogous to how we interact online and in particular the
way that ideas are multiple, interconnected and self-replicating. A
rhizome has no beginning or end… like the learning process.
So we develop connections with people, who’s ideas are of interest to us. This
might be through including them on a blogroll, facebook chatting ideas, liking or
commenting on posts, or retweeting in Twitter. We build up connections with
those that we have most in common with.
Connectivism is a useful analytic framework for understanding our interactions
across this digital landscape. Siemens outlines eight key principles of
Connectivism, how these apply to our interactions online are emphasised in
italics:
1. Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. Online we interact and
connect with others through a variety of channels, co-constructing knowledge.

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2. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
We connect both with people and with resources. Appropriating them for our
own individual needs.
3. Learning may reside in non-human appliances. So in addition to others, an
important part of our network are the tools and resources we use.
4. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known. So it is
recognising that we learn and develop through our network.
5. Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual
learning. Being part of a social network is about reciprocity; contributing to the
network, as well as using it.
6. Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
And as such we need to develop the types of digital literacy skills Jenkins talks
about, to harness the affordances of the media.
7. Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist
learning activities. The net offers a powerful mechanism for developing skills
and keeping up to date.
8. Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the
meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality.
Which is about developing our own personal learning environment and
critically reflecting on its development.
These concepts are particularly useful in terms of providing theoretical lenses
with which to describe the nature of online interactions and the ways in which
our online interactions change and adapt over time. They have been used in
particular to describe the patterns of behaviour we see in Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs have no central site or learning pathway, participants
can interact with the materials in a variety of ways and can contribute to the
knowledge poor through a variety of outlets, for example Google Apps, blogs,
Twiter, facebook, etc. The OLDS MOOC18 on Learning Design, which ran between
January and March 2013, had the main content available in Google Docs, in
addition the Cloudworks19 social networking site was used, along with Google
Hangouts for weekly synchronous sessions.
The Community Indicators Framework
In order to better understand interactions in social networks we have developed
a Community Indicators Framework (CIF) (Figure 5) (Galley, Conole et al. 2011).
The CIF is built around four key aspects of community experience:
Participation, i.e. the ways in which individuals engage in activity
Cohesion, i.e. the ties between individuals and the community as a whole
Identity, i.e. how individuals perceive the community and their place
within it
Creative capability, i.e. the ability of the community to create shared
artefacts, and shared knowledge and understanding.
18 http://olds.ac.uk
19 http://cloudworks.ac.uk

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Each of these aspects is interrelated and the whole reflects the multifaceted
complexity of what we experience as community. We have argued that these
aspects have a multiplicative effect on each other, in that the absence of one
is likely to significantly impact on the presence of the others.
Figure 5 The Community Indicators Framework
In the paper we concluded that:
The notion of ‘community’ is complex and nebulous, especially in relation
to online, open and transient communities.
And went on to state that:
Finally, we believe the CIF may also prove effective as a framework for
supporting and guiding developing communities, as it expresses the
tensions and challenges, which can emerge as communities evolve. A
critical approach to these tensions and challenges may help to manage
and limit risk to the community as people debate, discuss and work to
create new knowledge together openly and online. For example a
community may reflect on its progression and development using a series
of facilitative prompts, activities and tasks informed by the CIF.
The paper up to now has critiqued the nature of online interactions, along with
the associated notions of digital identity, presence and immersion. It has also
argued that teachers need to develop a new set of digital literacies to be able to
harness the power of social and participatory media. Clearly these media offer a
wealth of ways in which learners can interact with multimedia, and
communicate and collaborate with peers. However, the reality is that these

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technologies are not being used extensively. The majority of use is replicating
bad pedagogy, for example using a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE/Learning
Management System (LMS) as a content repository. Teachers say they lack the
time to experiment with incorporating technologies into their teaching. The
reality is that they lack the necessary digital literacy skill to enable them to
harness the power of social and participatory media. I have previously argued
that designing for learning is the key challenge facing education today (Conole
2013). Teachers need guidance and support to make pedagogically informed
design decisions that make innovative use of technologies. The next section
introduces the 7Cs of Learning Design framework, which seeks to address this
issue.
The 7Cs of Learning Design framework
This paper has described the ways in which we can interact online and the
benefits of social and participatory media for learning and professional
development. Clearly these media offer a rich set of ways in which learners can
interact, however in reality teachers are not using social and participatory media
extensively for learning. They need guidance and support to make informed
design decisions that are pedagogically effective and make innovative use of
technologies to support interaction, communicate and collaboration.
The 7Cs of Learning Design framework20 illustrates the key stages involved in
the design process, from initial conceptualisation of a learning intervention
through to trialing and evaluating it in a real learning context (Figure 6). The
framework consists of the following stages:
1. Conceptualise: What is the vision for the learning intervention, who is it
being designed for, what is the essence of the intervention, what pedagogical
approaches are used?
2. Capture: What Open Educational Resources are being used and what other
resources need to be developed?
3. Create: What is the nature of the learning intervention the learners will
engage with? What kinds of learning activities will the learners engage with?
4. Communicate: What types of communication will the learners be using?
5. Collaborate: What types of collaboration will be learners be doing?
6. Consider: What forms of reflection and demonstration of learning are
included? Are the learning outcomes mapped to the activities and assessment
elements of the learning intervention?
7. Consolidate: How effective is the design? Do the different elements of the
design work together?
20 A slidecaste presentation on the 7Cs framework is available online http://www.olds.ac.uk/the-
course/week-3-ideate. In addition, the resources associated with the franework are also
available online http://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/oer/oers/beyond-distance-research-
alliance/7Cs-toolkit.

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Figure 6: The 7Cs of learning design framework
For each of the seven stages we have developed a series of conceptual designs,
building on our work and that of others in the field. Four of these are described
here: the course features view, the course map view, the pedagogy profile
view and the storyboard. The first is the course features view, which is
associated with the conceptualise element of the 7Cs framework. This enables
teachers to think about the overall essence of the learning intervention and how
it will be delivered and supported. Participants interact with a pack of cards
around the following elements:
1. Principles (Figure 7): What is the essence of the course, what are the core
principles? So for example cultural or aesthetic aspects may be important, the
intervention may have a practical focus or be about applying theory to
practice, it may be based on a professional community of peers or it might be
important that the intervention includes elements of serendipity or even risk.
2. Pedagogical approaches: What pedagogies are involved? For example is the
intervention based on constructivist principles, is it problem or inquiry-
based?
3. Guidance and support (Figure 8): What guidance and support are provided?
For example in terms of a website or module handout, or access to study
materials.
4. Content and activities: What kinds of activities are included and what content
will the learners be using?
5. Reflection and demonstration: Are the learners actively encouraged to reflect
at key points? How are they demonstrating their learning? What forms of
diagnostic, formative and summative assessment are included?

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6. Communication and collaboration: How are the learners interacting with
each other and their tutors? Are there any elements of collaboration
included?
Figure 7" The principles associated with the learning intervention
Figure 8: Guidance and support
Once the course features view has been completed, teachers can fill in the
course views map, which considers what Guidance and Support is provided,
what Content and Activities the learners will engage with, what forms of
Communication and Collaboration are included, and the types of Reflection
and Demonstration. This includes details of which tools and resources are
associated with each of the elements and any notes such as details of
prerequisites required or a description of the philosophy underpinning the
learning intervention, for example it might be that peer interaction is deemed
important or that learners are expected to generate their own materials.
The third example is the pedagogy or activity profile view (Figure 9). This
enables teachers to map the types of activities the learners will engage with.
There are six types: assimilative activities (reading, viewing, listening),

17. 17
information handling, communicative, productive, experiential (such as drill and
practice exercises) and adaptive (such as modeling or simulation). The profile
also indicates the amount of time spent on assessment activities. The profile is
available as an online flash widget.21
Figure 9: An example of a completed pedagogy profile
Storyboarding is a well-established approach to visually representing a temporal
sequence of activities. For example, it is used in the film industry to represent the
key sequences involved in a plot. Storyboarding is used in our Learning Design
work, as a means of representing the overall design. It enables the
teacher/designer to see how the different elements of the design process fit
together. It consists of a timeline, with the activities included in the design along
the middle (Figure 10). Learning outcomes are mapped to the assessment
elements. Above the activities any inputs to the individual activities are include:
for example reading materials or listening to podcasts. Below the activities
outputs are listed, for example contribution to a discussion forum or creation of
a blog post.
21 http://www.rjid.com/open/pedagogy/html/pedagogy_profile_1_2.html

18. 18
Figure 10: A Learning Design Storyboard
Evaluation of the framework and the associated resources indicates that it is
welcomed and that the conceptual designs enable teachers to rethink their
design practice to create more engaging learning interventions for their learners.
The conceptual views can also be used with learners, to give them an indication
of the nature of the courses they are undertaking. The activity profile is
particularly useful as it enables learners to see the mix of different types of
learning activities they will engage with.
Conclusion
To conclude, I would like to argue that we need to move beyond the notion of
space and time when describing our interactions online. The theoretical
constructs described in this paper provide a richer means of representing and
understanding how we interact online. Key challenges face education and indeed
society more generally. Traditional boundaries of work and home life are
breaking down (Giddons), we now operate in a global society, where chances in
the economic or political context in one part of the world, can have a impact on
another part of the world. Education needs to prepare individuals for a
constantly changing environment. Individuals will need to develop new digital
literacy skills and in particular skills that enable them to be able to adapt, to
retrain, as most will have more than one career change. Social and participatory
media have an important role to play; providing individuals with a rich,
distributed ecology of resources and expertise that they can draw on. We are
now operating in a distributed context, where knowledge and understanding

19. 19
resides in both our minds and our digital networks, what Salomon described as
‘distributed cognition’ (Salomon 1993).
It is evident that technologies provide a rich set of ways in which learners and
teachers can interact with materials, and ways to communicate and collaborate.
As this paper has shown, technologies can foster a range of different pedagogical
approaches. The nature of our interactions online is complex and dynamic and
related to our digital identity and presence. The nature of learning, teaching and
research is fundamentally changing as a result of the impact of technologies. The
nature of education is changing as a result of free resources and expertise. New
business models are emerging which are challenging traditional educational
institutes. In a world in which content and expertise is increasingly free, what is
the role of a traditional institution? We are adopting more open practices and are
part of a global distributed community of peers. We need to embrace the power
of new technologies and learn to adopt more open practices. The 7Cs of Learning
Design framework and associated tools described in this paper provides a means
of guiding teachers in their design practice, so that they can make informed
design decisions, that are pedagogical effective and make good use of new
technologies.
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