In brief

This project will create:

1. Communities of people in the Arts Faculty who are actively engaged in learning design (including curriculum design) and helping to shape facilities and technologies, producing shared design knowledge, and laying the foundations for systematic pedagogic research. We will initially focus on PGRs, undergraduates, the Arts student experience group, and Arts WIHEA fellows and WATE winners. We will design approaches that work for each of these groups, but also create a shared purpose, design language, and capability between them. We will identify "handles" drawing other people into innovative learning design - such as the need to make programmes better connected to activities and businesses outside of the university, and the need to develop experience for the promotions process.
2. A repertoire of learning design patterns matched to curricular needs, disciplinary differences, principles for excellent student experience, and the learning spaces and facilities that are available in the new Faculty of Arts Building (FAB). The patterns will range in scope from individual sessions up to whole curriculum designs. Patterns will be related to each other vertically (e.g. session design fitting with curriculum design), and horizontally (e.g. a learning activity fitting with an assessment task). This is similar to the "recipes" approach used in several other projects (such as the Digital Pedagogy Library), but more detailed in describing characteristics and features, and with more systematic critical evaluation. The repertoire will also be more wide ranging, beyond examples that are technologically novel.
3. A meta-taxonomy describing the valued characteristics of learning designs (e.g. "inclusive"), applied to the repertoire, with analysis and evaluation specifying how each learning design achieves the characteristic. This taxonomy is a key output, created and owned by the FAB teaching community. It will act as the glue that connects practice across modules, programmes, and disciplines.
4. User-friendly presentations of the repertoire (including tools, spaces and techniques), and a workflow for its application by staff and students. Including videos, 360 guides, how-to guides, reflective accounts from students and staff.
5. An enhanced learning design process involving all parties, including students. With regular events and a physical location in the FAB, as well as the Arts TEAL web siteLink opens in a new window (to be renamed #FABPedagogies).
6. A training and support programme for staff and students to enable the implementation of their learning designs.
7. A process for evaluating existing learning designs and creating new designs.
8. The foundations for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) activity to research the impact of learning spaces and learning designs.

This will enable more effective constructive alignment in learning design, and more consistently reliable implementation and operation. It will form the basis of ongoing reflection and redesigning, so that we can keep improving and adapting in the future.

Introduction

In early 2022 we moved into the new Faculty of Arts Building. The learning spaces in the new building are of a much higher standard than we are used to, and vary much more in their form, features and function. They are, however, also very different to what we are used to.

This presents challenges and opportunities for us to re-evaluate:

1. How we use our learning spaces, including:
   1. formal learning spaces - lecture theatres, seminar rooms etc.;
   2. informal learning spaces - dwell spaces, academic studio, cafes etc. spaces;
2. How we adapt spaces for new purposes and practices (many spaces have been deliberately "under-designed" so that we can find new ways to use them).
3. Features and tools that are in spaces;
4. Patterns of learning activity and assessment that we undertake;
5. The goals, structures and methods of our modules and curriculums, which have to some extent grown into what they currently are because of the constraints imposed by old teaching spaces.
6. How we go about collaboratively designing teaching, learning, and the facilities that are available.

This extends to the consideration of the full spectrum of spaces: analogue and digital (media), local and remote (location) - as well as hybrid spaces that transcend media and location.

This could enable significant advances in the design and implementation of teaching and learning in the Faculty. We can achieve a kind of "constructive super-alignment".

Constructive Super-alignment

We usually aim for the alignment of "intended learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment tasks", so that students are doing activities that help them to achieve desired outcomes, and we are assessing them in ways that fit with these learning outcomes and activities. This is called "constructive alignment". The principle is well embedded at the more granular levels of module and activity design. It is becoming more common in curriculum and programme design. One result of this has been the focus upon "authentic assessment" - that is to say, specifying intended learning outcomes that are relevant to real world practices (for example from professional practice¹), with activities and assessments that resemble the real world practices we are aiming for. Note that ethical and aesthetic characteristics of the chosen methods should be in alignment with the outcomes we are aiming for.

Attempts to design for constructive alignment are often constrained by the facilities that are available and the repertoire of activities and assessment tasks from which we select. For example, if we do not have access to a "maker space" we cannot teach the practices that design professionals use in such space, and we cannot assess students for their ability to operate in such ways. We also often find that in organisations that have many such constraints, such practices are unknown, and hence not part of the learning design repertoire.

The achievement of constructive alignment may also be constrained by the process through which designing occurs. Awareness of methods and tools may be limited. When teachers are aware of the possibilities, their knowledge may be insufficient for the task of choosing, adopting and adapting techniques. They may not have access to the support needed to carry through their design choices.

If we expand the range of spaces available, create patterns for using those spaces that enable the learning activities and assessment tasks we require, and support the learning design process more effectively, our methods can be better aligned with the intended learning outcomes that we really want to achieve. We can call this "constructive super-alignment".

Plan

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¹ Professional practice includes academic research practice, so we may want students to be doing and being assessed for their research skills.

Project Members

Robert O'Toole, Director of Student Experience, Arts Faculty

Rebecca Stone, Director of Student Experience, Arts Faculty

Scott Lloyd, Senior Assistant Registrar, Space Management & Timetabling

Kerry Dobbins, Academic Development (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning lead for the project)

Project Contributors

Contributions from staff and students are welcome in many forms. Contact Robert for more information.