Article,
Closing the" Learning Design Life-Cycle" with the Pedagogical Planner
European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning, (2016)
Abstract
In the last few years, a number of approaches and tools have been proposed in the Learning Design (LD) research area, with the aim to support teachers in the complex process of conceiving and planning innovative educational activities. Most of the available tools support one or two stages of the whole learning design cycle and this has caused a certain variety of the available tools. Even if some researchers suggest such variety is positive, as teachers are free to pick up from the shell tools depending on the specific needs, others claim that this is too much disorienting, especially for those teachers who are not familiar with the LD field. To contribute to this still open discussion, we have developed a tool, able to cover the whole learning design cycle and have started studying its impact on teachers’ LD practices. The paper illustrates such a tool, called Pedagogical Planner (PP), which is able to support the three main phases of the learning design cycle, namely Conceptualization, Authoring and Implementation. The PP so far has been used by teachers to support innovative educational interventions in the field of intangible cultural heritage education and has proved to present a number of advantages and innovative aspects in respect to other existing tools, which are discussed in the paper.
