This agenda is a little bit less formulated than my previous agenda (on Civics and Citizenship education) and that’s reasonable as it reflects a later research interest. Even though I have separated out the two different aspects, I should also note that there is significant overlap between the two, and the division is purely for the sake of helping me to get organised for 2021. In short, in keeping with my work teaching in learning design, I have a growing research interest in designing for learning. I’m conscious that this is both a crowded and growing space, and also one that has a significant international interest, so I should be mindful of that as I go forward. In this work, I anticipate being supported by my colleagues at UTS (who I won’t mention here for the sake of privacy), and I also suspect that it might eventually provide me with more opportunities than my research into purely civics and citizenship education. Also, it fits a little more comfortable with the research centre that I am a member of at UTS.
I have a number of areas of interest here:
Microcredentials and Short Forms of Learning
This has arisen out of the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design (GCLD). Many of the subjects in this course are offered as microcredentials (mcds) which are becoming popular throughout Australia. However, there is a lot of confusion about what is meant by microcredentials, and this could be a productive site of research to determine how universities and other organisations are using them, and what the key design approaches to preparing mcds involve.
Possible site: Google Teachers Certification.
Teachers as Designers
I am not alone in being interested in the way that teachers work as designers. Indeed, a number of very well known learning design academics have explored this; however, I think that one potential area of interest that is under explored includes the way that currently practicing teachers are working as designers within the constraints and limits of their schools.
Possible site: Comparative interviews between specialist learning designers and teachers
Designing Courses for Learning Designers
Finally, and a little bit counterintuitively, I think that the work I have done designing a course for Learning Designers will stand me in good stead for some research into effective course design for learning designers. In order to do this, I think I will need to do some interviews with participants.