The following illustrates how the game Number Scrabble and Herb Simon’s thoughts on the importance of design representation appears likely to help with migration of 1000s of course sites from Blackboard Learn (aka Blackboard Original) to another LMS. Not to mention becoming useful post-migration. Number Scrabble Number Scrabble is a game I first saw described in Simon’s (1996) book Sciences […]
Representing problems to make the solution transparent
Exploring Dron’s definition of educational technology
Pre-COVID the role of technology in learning and teaching in higher education was important. However, in 2020 it became core as part of the COVID response. Given the circumstances it is no surprise that chunks of that response were not that great. There was some good work. There was a lot of a “good enough for the situation” work. There […]
On formal qualifications and improving learning and teaching
The following is sparked by Twitter conversations arising from a tweet from @neilmosley5 quoting from this article by Tony Bates. In particular, pondering a tweet from @gamerlearner where the idea is that a “consistent requirement for educators in HE to have some kind of formal teaching qual” will not only help motivate academics “to take time out to learn how […]
What are the symbols in digital education/design for learning?
Benbya et al (2020, p. 3) argue that digitial technologies do make a difference, including this point (among others) Digital technologies not only give rise to complex sociotechnical systems; they also distinguish sociotechnical systems from other complex physical or social systems. While complexity in physical or social system is predominantly driven by either material operations or human agency, complexity in […]
Reflecting on the spread of the Card Interface for Blackboard Learn
In late 2018 I started work at an institution using Blackboard Learn. My first project helping “put online” a group of 7 courses highlighted just how ugly Blackboard sites could be and how hard it was to do anything about it. By January 2019 I shared the solution I’d developed – the Card Interface. Below is a before/after image illustrating […]
Do the little things matter in design for learning?
In learning what matters most is what the learner does. As people looking to help people learn we can’t make them learn. The best we can do is to create learning situations – see Goodyear, Carvalho & Yeoman (2021) for why I’m using situation and not environment. We design the task, the learning space and social organisation (alone, pairs, groups […]
