Cuttent status of the WCKER and IMS LD

We put in a bid to expand the tool in the direction of LD in the second phase of the DeL Tools we only got the funding to develop the content packaging WCKER further. However we are still hoping to take it in an LD direction when the opportunity arises.

The wizards we are designing and piloting in this stage of the project still collect a lot of learning design information as well as structural and metadata information. While this is not actually then used in the content packaging side of the tool it may well feed into the html output and if we did get funding for the LD stage then into that too.

The WCKER as an IMS LD wizard driver

DB and DW have been in close discussion with members of Waterloo University LT3 group  http://lt3.uwaterloo.ca/index.html as to the possiblites of moving the WCKER forward into the IMS LD sphere.

As a result of talking with David Bean, Dawn Buzza, Kevin Harringan and Les Richards some possiblites were uncovered:

General Points

• Dawn Buzza's and David Bean's work on LD repositiories and search uncovered the problem that using 'teaching and learning' categories for search did not relate to the teachers / instructors vocabularies (example?)
• Without initial teaching and learning context 'abstract' IMS LDs do not appear relevant to dicipline specific teaching challenges.
• The above work also found that IMS LD does not allow teaching and learning contexualisation within the spec. IMS LD is simply a method of storing and transporting runtime info. Not so good for capturing learning and teaching style 'meaning' / usage.

Therefore, producing an IMS LD wizard which simply gives the user a neat set of IMS LD options would not be effective (it would simply rebuild the exisiting IMS LD beta section of Reload anyway).

• Les Richard's work on the T5 model  http://lt3.uwaterloo.ca/faculty/model.html in relation to faculty teaching could be a focus for aiding teachers / instructors towards effective IMS LDs.
• T5 model focuses on tasks rather than content as that which is 'owned' by a teacher or course.
• Focuses on defining the teaching challenges / problems of a discipline rather than asking the teacher to choose an activity focused solution up front. (This approach could fit well with a wizard style format)
• Uses pedagogicaly sound and accepted theories (Bloom, Biggs) to guide the teacher to a relevant solution in the form of activities.

Next Steps

• LT3 group to map T5 model to possible IMS LD search categories (this should lead to ideas for an initial set of IMS LDs)
• LT3 group to suggest a draft model of WCKER wizard style process for T5 based IMS LD wizard
• TALL to engage in the debate, and feedback WCKER progress and its possible relationship with future IMS LD innovations
• TALL to consider the use of teaching challenges/problems approach for a future version of the WCKER (especially with respect to the WCKER code).

Possible outputs for March (WCKER 'Phase1')

• Short, joint-authored report on the above.
• Clear 'road map' for the WCKER to support IMS LD in a manner which can engage directly with teachers / instructors.