Learning pathways

As students taking the PC3 approach will all take different learning pathways towards their award, we thought it would be a good idea to record and store them in the repository for following cohorts. This enables subsequent students to see what course others used to fill their competency gaps. All sounds good, but how to implement it? I’ve bean chewing on this one for some time. Some of the questions I have been asking myself are as follows:

• how to represent the pathway: a description within text doc, a set of URLs, …
• how to link into course/module specifications within the repository
• how to use intraLibraries LOM set to provided the metadata for the pathway

My view of this problem looked something like this:

Initial View of Learning Pathway

I was trying to work out how to use the metadata to form links to course specifications. The problem with a pathway like this is the metadata could be infinite and unknown. If you design for a fixed step pathway you will have those that don’t fit and infinite steps requires complexity that is probably an new application in itself. 

As usual it takes a conversation with some one else to solve the problem. Was talking metadata and repositories with Nick this afternoon, and the thought stuck me. The important thing is not the pathway, the order in what some one takes the modules is not really relevant. What is relevant is the link between the competencies they want to improve the course/module they take to achieve this. A simple (parsimonious) solution is to just map competency gaps to course/modules taken. This would mean a known and minimal set of metadata. Pairs are such an obvious computer science solution; don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. @MrNick thanks!

This would, I suspect, is probably more in tune with how most individuals would search for such information, one step, competency, at a time. For those who want to generate a complex series, the search engine, using specific fields should be plenty. Still need to think more on this and it may not fit with the vision the rest of the team wish to offer students.

PLC Personalised Learning through coaching

The discussion back in Febuary with JISC started the ball rolling on developing a module as a jump of point for Personalised Curriculum Creation. Over the past five months we have had to look into University processes to find out: whether it was possible for students to register on a single module; and whether it was possible to validate a module external to a course. There have been many discussions with various elements of university systems and debates with others interested in this type of development. Alongside this we have been busy forming ideas and creating the module spec itself.

We’ve designed it around the PC3 process to ensure that all the elements of that process (learning bank, studeo etc) are integrated – see the diagram here. Started with the learner – their self assessment and reflection – we then looked at the learning blocks that would be needed to support this process and the coaching that would underpin it. The assessment we had already agreed would be evidence based so the issue here was really how to ensure we get evidence for the assessment without that interfering with the personal development and coaching which requires trust and confidentiality. We have (I think) resolved this by identifying clear elements of reflection for assessment and making clear the rest is entirely personal – we need to make the assessed elements also serve to give us information to evaluate the process so the assessments also have that in mind.

The learning blocks will comprise learning resources and activities that might include both group and individual online activities. The advantages of doing it this way are that we can make use of resources from a wide range of sources and make available our blocks as learning objects in their own right.

Janet Finlay edited by Dawn

X-Stream power link

I spent a pleasant morning talking code with Mike and Nick who are working on the repository and various methods for enabling access from other applications. They (and the X-Stream team recently enable tutors to access the repositories Learning Objects (LOs) via a power link in X-Stream. Basically this means when creating a course the tutor can select the power-link, search the repository and embed one or more of the returned LOs as part of their modules content. Now all we need to do is fill the repository with LOs, not an easy job. During our discussions I asked them if it was possible to create a link that the students can use to search for content and research. This would be useful for the PC3 project for several reasons. Since we are considering using X-Stream as our main port of call students will need to be able to search both LOs and research papers for their own learning, as well as search course specifications and learning paths to help them decided on their own learning path. Nick said he would look into it but it wasn’t a perspective they had been considering. The alternative will be either a link to the intraLibrary login, with students using it directly, or a link to an external search facility, like the one the repository team have already developed for research papers.