Learning design and educational technology: what’s the relationship?

Many writings about learning design assume or argue that learning design has something to do with educational technology. In Conole et al. (2004), for example, learning design is what links educational technologies to learning theories: theory-enabled design points to which technology to use, and one can read back from an educational technology to the theory which informed its design.

It’s certainly the case that many people turn to learning design because of questions about how to use educational technology or laudable concerns not to use it badly. However, after 20 years of practice in producing online distance learning, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best summary of the relationship between learning design and educational technology is: None at all.

Learning design, if it's a kind of design, is about matching form and function, means and ends: in particular, it is about working out what learning activities will enable students or other learners to reach certain learning outcomes. So the typical output of a learning design process is a set of learning activities, on the principle that learners are only going to learn as a result of what they, as learners, do, not what you, as teachers, do. (See previous post.) But those learning activities could be implemented through many different technologies, and which one you choose will depend on what is available to you, is reliable, and (crucially) is available to learners.

If you have an activity which calls for some kind of group discussion, that could be done face-to-face in a seminar or workshop, remotely and synchronously using online conferencing, or asynchronously using online forums; or learners could watch a recording of such a discussion, or read a transcript, and make some response of their own – probably less satisfactory, but for learners in prison (for whom my university has to make provision on many of its courses) it may be the only practical option.

If you are going to have learning activities designed around some sort of PDP or portfolio function, then you need to consider that particular products for supporting these may come and go. Over an eight or ten year lifespan, which is the norm for courses at my university, then the prevailing technologies are likely to change at least once during that period. Under those circumstances, it seems to me clear that the course’s learning design, the top-level description of the activities which learners will do, is that part of the design which does not change. The question of which technology can best implement those activities is also a design question, but a separate one.


Reference
Conole et al. 2004, 'Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design', Computers and Education, vol 43, pp 17-33.