Learning Design Toolkit

This toolkit grew out of discussions with teaching teams, looking at and using the Designing Elearning website and searching for tools to use in my work.
The visual nature of the learning design maps in the Designing Elearning website seem to strike a chord with most people (http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/designing/), which got me thinking about creating a toolkit for workshopping delivery models with teaching staff. You can use this toolkit for designing learning in a range of contexts - online, workplace and on campus.
This is an example of a delivery model under development using the Learning Design Toolkit.

click on the image for a larger version

What's in the toolkit?
· Icon cards
· Idea cards
· Context markers
The four icons relate to the icons used in the Designing Elearning Maps, however the words have changed! The reason for this is that we have used Ron Oliver's concepts of Learning Design extensively internally, and I wanted to maintain the same language.

Included are 66 'idea cards'. These have been developed with photos mainly sourced through Flickr. Please do not remove the attribution, as that is a condition the photo owners have placed on their use. See further information at end of this document.

Also in the kit are some context labels. These can be used on the left hand side of the map to identify the location or context of the learning.

In your physical toolkit, I'd also recommend:
· Dark masking tape - for marking out lines easily
· Whiteboard markers
· Blutac
· Butcher’s paper as an alternative to a whiteboard
· Camera for documenting your finished learning design

Download the files
There are three files to be downloaded. Each contains multiple pdfs.

Download icons.pdf (557kb)
Download cards.pdf (2Mb)
Download contexts.zip (161kb)

Printing and preparing your own toolkit
· Use the heaviest weight card you can for printing out the pdfs - a good quality white card is best. Print at high quality if available in your printer settings.
· Print multiple copies of icons.pdf
· Print a single copy each of cards.pdf and contexts.pdf
· Laminate the printed pages and then cut out shapes. Red marks indicate cutting lines on the idea cards
TIP: you can buy A4 sheets of fridge magnet backing from office and craft supplies stores, which can be attached to the back of the large icons for use on magnetic whiteboards.

Customisation:
If you wish to make changes to the large icons, please email me for the .png files. You are welcome to use the concept and create your own personalised set of cards. The .png template in Macromedia Fireworks I used for creating the cards is available on request via email as well.

How I use the toolkit
One aspect of my role is working with delivery teams as they develop or refine their delivery and assessment models. At the end of the session, I recommend taking photos to document the process.

Using a large whiteboard, icons can be used to build a physical representation of the model.

You will need to agree on your timescale - depending on the situation, this may be in days, weeks or months.

The idea cards should be scattered between the participants to act as a prompt for various activities, means of support or resources to be made available.

One advantage of using a whiteboard is that links can be drawn between items, extra information added in and infinite changes can be made through the model development process.

If you find you use the toolkit in different ways, I'd love to hear about it!

Permission to reproduce and adapt
This toolkit has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 licence that allows you to:
· to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
· to make derivative works

If you are redistributing the Toolkit please indicate it was "originally developed by Kirsty Sharp in 2005 (email: Kirsty@otheredge.com.au)"
More information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

Sharing - there is a pdf version of this post available: LearningDesignToolkit.pdf
Enjoy!