The use of learning analytics to better inform learning design to improve student outcomes
Learning analytics is becoming increasingly prevalent across a wide range of educational institutions. I believe that it will have a powerful effect upon educators and students in the future. Used appropriately, it might inform learning designers about the different aspects of their course, and give insights into how the might tweak them to better meet the needs of learners from diverse backgrounds.
The use of social media by teachers as a differentiated professional development tool
Another area I am interested in is the way that social media tools, like Twitter, for example, can be used professional development, especially for teachers. I think this kind of informal, semi-directed learning is an interesting showcase of the benefits and also the affordances of technology. However, I don’t think that all uses of twitter are equally effective, and I am interested in how we can design for that kind of professional learning to be more effective and better differentiated to individual teachers’ needs.
Socially Just Learning Design
The final aspect of my practice that I am interested in is the way that Leanring Design can be made more socially just. By this, I think that we can use technological tools to ensure that learning is designed in such a way that it is accessible to a diverse group of learners. This is more than just accessibility, although that is an important part, and should include ideas related to culturally relevant pedagogy. I’ve written a blog post on some of my ideas where I try to link the idea of socially just learning design with the notions of Open Education and Open Educational Resources, and Fraster’s work on the three ‘R’s of social justice: redistribution, recognition and representation.