This document discusses developing high quality online and blended learning courses for professionals. It outlines the EU's School Education Gateway program which provides extensive online teacher professional development. Effective online teacher PD incorporates reflection, authentic tasks, and communities of practice. The Conversational Framework models the learning process through different types of interactions. The Learning Designer tool allows teachers to design blended learning activities based on this framework and share their designs. The Blended and Online Learning Design MOOC will use these approaches to collaboratively build knowledge around online course design.

1. www.researchcghe.or
g
Online and Blended learning courses of high pedagogical
quality for professionals/adult learners
Nordic Network for Adult Learning
March 2021
Diana Laurillard
UCL Knowledge Lab

2. www.researchcghe.or
g
Outline
• Developments in the EU
• School Education Gateway for Teacher Professional Development
• What counts as high quality online PD?
• The Conversational Framework
• How do we share the burden of innovation?
• The Learning Designer tool
• Massive open online collaborations
• The Blended and Online Learning Design course
• Digtital pedagogies for all sectors

3. Professional learning
online across the EU
The EU’s School Education
Gateway: Teacher
Academy
Erasmus+ funded
Extensive online learning
for teacher professional
development
Designed on the principles
for TPD from research

4. Effective online TPD – findings from literature
• Allows for teacher exchanges in learning
communities (Schleicher 2016)
• Gives teachers ownership (Laurillard 2016)
• Addresses concrete classroom problems
(Dede et al 2009)
• Includes authentic tasks and activities
(Huang 2002, Reeves & Pedulla 2013,
Vrasidas & Zembylas 2004)
• Promotes reflection about own
teaching practice (Huang 2002, Scott &
Scott 2010, Vrasidas & Zembylas 2004)
• Incorporates an effective
intersectionality of technology,
content, pedagogy, and learners
(Whitehouse et al 2006)
• Offers some form of mentorship
(Prestridge & Tondeur 2015)

5. 6 Principles of the TA Instructional Design
Drawn from findings in the research literature
1.
Facilitating
peer
exchange
2.
Communit
y building
4.
Content
as Trigger
for
discussion
and new
practice
5.
Flexible
scheduling
6.
Facilitating
transfer to
practice
3.
Peer
review

6. Image credits: avian /Shutterstock.com
The Teacher Academy
• Launched 2016 by the European
Commission
• Offers MOOCs for teachers on the School
Education Gateway
• Developed with the support of a
Pedagogical Advisory Board
• 31 courses with 50,000 unique registered
users
www.schooleducationgateway.eu

7. Facilitating Peer Exchange
• A sense of European co-design is cultivated
• Respecting ownership and expertise of other
participants
• Sharing ideas and reflections and commenting on
those of peers
• Peer review of course products

8. TA Evaluation Results - Completion
• On average 44% of those
starting a course complete it
• On average 25% of those
enrolled to a course complete
it
* Data from 2019

9. www.researchcghe.or
g
What counts as high quality
online learning?

10. www.researchcghe.or
g
What counts as high quality learning?
The Conversational Framework
Derived from theories and research on learning and teaching (Laurillard,
2002, 2012)
To represent the teaching-learning process as
• a series of iterative exchanges
• between the learner and a ‘teacher’ and
• between a learner and their peers
• at two levels of concepts and practices
- in any context, primary to professional education, any subject area, and
wherher face-to-face, online, or blended (Laurillard, 2002, 2012)

11. What does it take to learn in formal education?
L
C
L
C
L
P
L
P
Learner
concepts
Learner
practice

12. Teacher
concepts
Peer
concepts
Peer
practice
Learning
environment
Teacher
communication
cycle
Peer
communication
cycle
Teacher
modelling
cycle
Peer
modelling
cycle
L
C
L
C
L
P
L
P
Learner
concepts
Learner
practice
Role-play
session
Mock
exhibition
What does it take to learn in formal education?

13. The Conversational Framework
Teacher
concepts
Peer
concepts
Peer
practice
Learning
environment
Teacher
communication
cycle
Teacher
modelling
cycle
Peer
modelling
cycle
Inquiring
Practising Collaborating
Acquiring
Producing
L
C
L
C
L
P
L
P
Learner
concepts
Learner
practice
Discussion
All these types of learning work together to
complement and enhance each other

14. How does technology help? Conventional and digital
methods
Teacher
concepts
Peer
concepts
Peer
practice
Learning
environment
Teacher
communication
cycle
Teacher
modelling
cycle
Peer
modelling
cycle
Inquiring
Practising Collaborating
These learning types are encouraged through a
variety of conventional and digital methods
Acquiring
Producing
L
C
L
C
L
P
L
P
Learner
concepts
Learner
practice
Lectures/
Videos
Library/
Internet
Workshops/
Digital tools
Group outputs,
physical/digital
Produce real /
virtual output
Discussion
Discussion
groups/
Forums

15. POLL For each of these learning types could you rate how
much learning time your learners spend on each one
during wholly online learning?
1 = ‘the least time’ to 5 = ‘the most time’

16. The Conversational Framework for Learning Design
Discussion points
1 Why were those the least used learning types?
2 Are any of the learning types particularly difficult to use with
digital or online methods?

17. www.researchcghe.or
g
How do we share the burden of
innovation?

18. 18
Building teaching community knowledge
The Learning
Designer
A free open online design tool to help with
moving your teaching online.
Based on the six learning types from the
Conversational Framework – a model of what it
takes to learn.
Supports teachers and educators to
• design a sequence of blended and online
teaching and learning activities
• analyse their pedagogic design
• share their learning designs with each other
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/learning-
designer

19. Adapting a learning design

20. Adapting a learning design

21. The pie-chart analyses the distribution of
types of learning in the design, in this case,
acquisition, collaboration and production, but
mostly discussion.
There are no rules about what it should be,
but now you have the opportunity to consider
if that looks appropriate.
It is entirely online (pale blue), no f2f.
There is some trainer presence (dark brown)
to respond to questions, and conduct the
plenary discussion.
More than half is synchronous (dark pink) -
with a group and with the trainer
There is mostly individual work (pale green),
then groups, then whole class.
Analysing a learning design

22. How does this help us plan the optimal mix
across all the learning types?

23. www.researchcghe.or
g
The Blended and Online Learning
Design course

24. From 05 April
2021
https://bit.ly/BOLDcours
e
http://bit.ly/Learning-
Designer
Large-scale online course to orchestrate collaborative
knowledge development by education professionals

25. Week 1: Rethinking your current
teaching
• Builds on current teaching
• Introduces the Conversational
Framework for the underpinning
pedagogic principles
• Introduces the Learning
Designer as the means to take
these into your new digital
practices
• Prepares the groundwork for
collaboration

26. Step 2.3: Designs for the learning outcome ‘to explain a
concept'
• Principles for a good design:
Constructive Alignment
• Activities to motivate and
encourage learning
• Exercise to compare two
versions of a learning design
and adapt or create your own
• Share on the Padlet wall

27. Week 2 Activity 2: Peer review to share and critique learning
designs
Week 2 Activity 3: Developing students’independent learning
In-depth
collaborative
examination of
what it takes to
develop a good
learning design

28. Week 3 Activity 3: Collaborative knowledge-building
Building a
collaborative
community of
teaching and
learning
innovation

29. Step 3.8: A bold future for teaching

30. The bold future for teaching?
If we work together, we can share the great innovations needed to guide the
transformation to a bold new future for teaching, and not allow others to guide it for
us.
If we do this, it will also empower the teaching profession to be more powerful
consumers of the way technology is used in education.
I’ve got lessons to plan lined up for the Learning Designer – the last I gave was
observed formally towards a PGCE and was very well received for the balance,
variety and methodology. (Jonathan Vernon)
Sharing the best practice is the best way to learn. As teachers, we are
learners, and it gives others an idea of time invested in the design and how
interactive the lesson could be. (Sasi Antony)
Indeed sharing my designs with other participants has been useful and I have
received valuable feedbacks from them. I would definitey return to learning
designer to get inspired from other's designs.
Can it work?

31. www.researchcghe.or
g
The Conversational Framework illustrates 6 contrasting ways in which
students engage with learning
Teachers enjoy using the Learning Designer to create opportunities for
blended and online learning and to exchange ideas and outputs
We will do much better if we share new ideas for blended and online
learning designs, working to the principles derived from research
To summarise
Please join us in the Blended and Online Learning Design course at
https://bit.ly/BOLDcourse