digitally blooming – taxonomies for a digital age

LTE (Learning and Teaching Enhancement) are busy. Next month we launch Design for Active Learning (D4AL), our toolbox of designs and activities with a focus on building in feedback data about how students are learning and how successful/or not their learning activities are.

examples of different learning design activities

The process has involved colleague Patrick Lynch and myself trialing a number of different learning design activities in order to build our own core framework. Underneath them all, I think I’ve found a consistent pedagogic skeleton.  Everything else is clothes and accessories, The skeleton begins with Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.

Blooming Bloom

Never has a taxonomy been so reproduced and challenged, uncritically accepted or taken apart and restructured. It’s been critiqued as linear, sequential and inappropriate for the 21st century but I don’t see it like that. In fact the opposite. For me Bloom is still relevant today. It all depends on how you view it.

Controversial as this idea might be, I want to suggest despite the different world we live in and the impact of the internet  – I’d go as far as to say Bloom could have been written for a digital higher education in 21st century.

Can I justify this?

Well, let’s try…

Bloom for beginners

Bloom had a team. There was a whole crowd involved but only himself as chairperson is remembered – a bit like Dearing being forever associated with widening participation, student fees and the implementation of virtual learning environments. Bloom et. al. were tasked with identifying the best way to construct the curriculum in the US school system. So, years and miles away in time and distance from UK HE today.  Not the best beginning I know!

What is Bloom’s Taxonomy?

It’s a classification system used to write a learning outcome. (LO). LO’s should contains a verb (an action),  an object (usually a noun identifying the subject of learning) and often the context where the learning takes place. The University of Nottingham show this example of the structure of a learning outcome in science.

Bloom basics

Bloom’s team identified three domains of knowledge. Learning activities today should aim to develop one or more of these domains and be capable of measuring the extent to which this has happened. When Bloom was revised (more of this below) a fourth

• Cognitive (subject knowledge),
• Psychomotor (dexterity/manual skills),
• Affective (attitudes/values/emotions)

Bloom’s team addressed the cognitive domain.Critics of the taxonomy are quick to point out the difficulties of applying historical, linear systems to the complexity of real-world learning environments in 21st century but this triptych e.g VAK (Visual Aural Kinesthetic) has endured.  While research has debunked ‘the myth of learning styles’ (Coffield) it’s broadly accepted students have different learning preferences. Designing different tasks at different times which involve more than one approach can be beneficial.

The cognitive domain is most often displayed as a pyramid. This is reminiscent of the earlier hierarchy of needs by Maslow. In fact, Maslow should be incorporated into Bloom. Although the hierarchy has also been critiqued, unless students have met their basic needs, they’re unlikely to do well academically.

Learning designers should keep Maslow in mind.

image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs.svg

Back to Bloom…

The original version of the cognitive domain has six dimensions. these represent what Bloom called lower and higher order thinking skills.

• Evaluation – appraise and critique
• Synthesis – combine and integrate
• Analysis – compare and contrast
• Application – apply and restructure
• Comprehension – understand and recognise
• Knowledge – acquire and remember

In 2001 the dimensions were revised (Anderson and Krathwohl et. al.), Synthesis and Evaluation swapped around and Creativity given the top slot.

 

image from Wilson, Leslie O. (2001) https://thesecondprinciple.com/teaching-essentials/beyond-bloom-cognitive-taxonomy-revised/

There are dozens of versions of the original and revised taxonomy online, many of which have suggestions for understanding each dimension such as the one below from Vanderbilt University.

The most complex one I’ve seen is the rose version below. The conception of the taxonomy as a circle represents a more realistic approach for academic practitioners to follow, one where learning happens at different times in different subjects and is generally more complex and messy than the implied linear perspective originally proposed by Bloom.

Another aspect of Bloom to take into consideration is the division of knowledge into different types.

• Factual  basic knowledge and facts e.g. vocabulary, definitions and specific details.
• Conceptual  inter-relationships, e.g. information systems, classifications and categories.
• Procedural  methods of inquiry e.g. algorithms and techniques with criteria for using them.

The revised Bloom added Metacognitive Knowledge  (awareness and knowledge of individual cognition e.g. manipulation of thinking processes). It differentiated between “knowing what” and “knowing how”. It also added greater emphasis on the sub categories attached to the dimensions. See A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview ( Krathwohl, D. 2010) for more details.

So that’s the framework.

Bloom’s taxonomy in 21st century 

21st century learning design is described by the Microsoft Innovative Educator Programme as involving communication and collaboration, with knowledge construction requiring interpretation, analysis and synthesis.

The UCL ABC types of learning design activities is based on previous work of the OU. It’s framework is represented by six cards covering acquisition, inquiry, practice, production, discussion and collaboration. It’s not hard to align these with the understanding, application, analysis, evaluation and creation of knowledge laid out by Bloom.

Digital Bloom

More recently, the taxonomy has been overlaid with a range of digital tools for achieving the different dimensions. Another indication Bloom is far from over yet.

image Credit: Ron Carranza https://teachonline.asu.edu/2016/05/integrating-technology-blooms-taxonomy/

Many of the digital models retain the triangle or stepped pyramid approach which is not helpful. Don’t think of the dimensions as sequential but think circles, continuums or quadrants. A useful adaptation is the Padagogy wheel – which is well worth an exploration.

Last thoughts

The elements of Bloom’s taxonomy shouldn’t be dismissed as no longer relevant. Who wouldn’t support the development of activities which encourage students to acquire, apply, analyse and evaluate knowledge with the aim of creating new understandings. How better to introduce digital tools and literacies than via situations which require application, analysis and critical evaluation. The heart of  higher education remains the construction of new ways of seeing and the creation of new knowledge and the core concepts of Bloom’s taxonomy can help you design opportunities for learning which support this.

The taxonomy isn’t outdated. It’s blooming useful.

It’s not what you use, it’s how you use it which counts.

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Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals (1956).

Anderson, L.W. (Ed.), Krathwohl, D.R. (Ed.), Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Complete edition). New York: Longman.

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digital behind design, reflections on #LD-CIN event

Loved the quirky knitted fish!

In the post Anyone for T I asked if T for Technology and T for Teaching have merged?  The question came about following a restructure. My role changed from Academic Technology Enhanced Learning Advisor to Teaching Enhancement Advisor. What’s the difference?

In both roles I’m working towards putting the digital behind the design. Learning and teaching enhancement for me is about learning activities, with or without technology but – in 2017 – most probably with.

For many staff, technology is not the driving force. TEL people are too often seen as techies, fixers of computers and data analysts. This fixed identify is hard to break especially as many of us can fix a PC (or at least check the wires and plugs!) and know something about data from a dashboard, spreadsheet or research perspective. Truth is, many of us are education developers with a range of skills and experience around curriculum and programme design. We might not have all the answers but we know where to get them and when it comes to technology – it goes wrong for us too. Well, for me at least as colleagues will testify!

Last week Patrick Lynch and I attended the Learning Design Cross Institutional Network event at the University of Oxford. It was the networks 7th meetup, our first and hopefully not the last. The next is at Leeds, literally down the road. We might take a team. Reinvent the awayday. Back to the times when it meant being off campus –  not in a room in a building you don’t often go to.

Learning design is the enhancement of learning and teaching in the way I understand it. Not technology first but pedagogy first and foremost all the way home.

These are my key takeaways from the event. If you’re a learning technologist who finds them familiar you might also be a learning designer too.

• LD focuses on the activity the learner does rather than the delivery of content
• LD is about optimising the environment for learning to take place
• LD is about changing thinking more than changing tools
• LD requirements vary across disciplines so there’s no one-size-fits-all model
• LD builds in feedback loops to assess effectiveness during rather than the end
• LD is scholarly i.e. research informs practice and practice informs research
• LD visualisations have been shown to influence teaching practice (see Toetenel and Rientes (2016) below*)

We all arrive at learning design from different directions (the topic of a future blogpost). Neither Patrick nor I have worked in content development teams but we’ve both  have had roles working directly with staff to support and scaffold their own pedagogic practice.

Gill Ferrell from Jisc presented an overview of their work in this area. All familiar. A reminder we’ve worked in the sector for some time and there are great and free resources here Jisc Design Studio

• Design for Learning (D4L) Programme 2006-2008
• Curriculum Design Programme 2008-2012
• Curriculum Delivery Programme 2008-2010
• Assessment and Feedback Programme 2011 -2014

Gill reinforced how the resurgence of interest in learning design demonstrates a shift of emphasis in a number of ways:

• shift away from learning design as the delivery of content and what teachers do, to the designing of learning activities and focus on what students do.
• shift away from seeing assessment of learning to assessment for learning as a future driver with greater emphasis on the role of feedback and timely dialogue with students.
• learning analytics used to map assessment to prevent bunching and identify places where feedback loops take place.
• Appreciative Inquiry as a methodology to focus less on problems and more on what works well and how to build on it.

HE is changing. My last blog post Perfect Academic Storm was about Degree Apprenticeships. Aimed at those in full-time employment and paid for by employees, these ‘new for some – less new for others’ programmes are 2017 equivalent of work based distance learning. More importantly – they have the potential to put learning design in the spotlight. To be relevant to the work place activities will need to apply theory to practice which is both experiential and problem based. Students will need to become independent learners not only managing their time effectively but also co-constructing negotiated modules and assessments. Learning design practitioners can make this happen. With or without technology but most probably with,

image from https://pixabay.com/en/lego-colors-toys-build-up-disorder-688154/

Learning gain is another new layer of HE and also has implications for learning design. Helen King from HEFCE defined learning gain as the improvement in knowledge, skills, work-readiness and personal development made by students during their time spent in higher education.  There are a number of current projects exploring what this means and how to measure it. Outputs will drive an exploration of how learning design can embed learning gain in the student experience.  Definitely a space to watch.

The sense of learning design déjà vu was reinforced with Katharine Reedy’s overview of learning design at the OU. Their taxonomy describes learning design as ‘a methodology for enabling teachers/designers to make more informed decisions in how they go about designing learning activities and interventions, which is pedagogically informed and makes effective use of appropriate resources and technologies’. (Conole, 2012: 121) Sounds obvious yet still a new concept for many. Katharine bought some  Activity Planners and a reminder of the Word Wheel Again, so many great free resources available online. You almost never need to make anything ever again!

The heart of our session was a call to bring together learning analytics and learning design. To reimagine data as feedback and create designs with feedback points throughout rather than a single evaluation at the end. To be agile enough to respond to data which suggests students are doing well or less well than expected. One of Patricks favourite images is one saying the next big thing will be lots of small things.

This is right – we have all the pieces of the jigsaw but need a different way to put them together.  The approach to enhancement PAtrick and I are developing is called Design for Active Learning (D4AL). It’s like a baseline jigsaw which can then be adapted to make a range of different activity images. More about this in the next blog post next week.

Thanks to everyone at LD-CIN for a great day and we’re looking forward to meeting up again next year.

LDCIN meeting #8 is 16th February 2018 at the NHS Leadership Academy, 3 Sovereign Street, Leeds, LS1 4GP.

Jiscmail list LEARNINGDESIGN@JISCMAIL.AC.UK

LD-CIN website  https://sites.google.com/site/learningdesignsig/home 

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*OU research on connecting big data sets to learning design

• Toetenel, L. and Rientes, B. (2016) Learning Design – creative design to visualise learning activities. Open Learning. The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 31:3, 233-244.
• Toetenel, L. and Rientes, B. (2016) Analysing 157 Learning Designs using Learning Analytic approaches as a means to evaluate the impact of pedagogical decision-making. British Journal of Educational Technology 47(5) pp. 981–992.

perfect academic storm

Last week I wrote about the broken part time market in higher education.  The post referred to the new Degree Apprenticeship being developed at the University of Hull. Drawing on the experience of myself and colleagues it included this:

Without support from your employer, part time study risks being an unachievable goal. The new Degree Apprenticeships have to acknowledge the challenge of full time work/part time study.

This week we met again with the Degree Apprenticeship programme and module leaders. Initially these sessions were planned as CAIeRO at Hull. We were putting into practice the CAIeRO at Northampton model, alongside our own Design for Active Learning (D4AL) approach. Learning as we go, we’re realising CAIeRO at Hull is going to be more agile, more responsive and possibly different every time we run it.

It’s clear Degree Apprenticeships are great opportunities for D4AL conversations. Where else do you get a combination of university, employers and mature students all involved with a mix of on-campus/off-campus learning and teaching.

Full time work. Part time study. Distance learning. Virtual environments. Digital literacies. Add to the mix a non-traditional student base, many out of formal education for some time with multiple commitments in the workplace and home. It has all the makings of a perfect academic storm.

With Degree Apprenticeships local employers are footing the bill for three years of part-time study. They’ve asked for a fast, focused, blended route. The programme includes negotiable modules where students choose what they study alongside traditional business disciplines topics which will need applying to workplace practices.

Last week we ran the first two stages of a CAIeRO; writing a mission statement and deciding the look and feel of the course. This week we were faced with a room full of different faces. Of necessity the first half of the session was  informational. It was the first time all the module leaders from Year One had come together. Ao also the first time it was possible to create an overview of the course with the people who were going to be teaching it. The most powerful tool on the room was the table they all sat around. Closely followed by the flip chart paper and pens used to outline their modules and how they fit together but before moving onto storyboarding the activities students would do it was time to step back and consider the bigger issues.

Too often the programme validation process is like a jigsaw. Still in its box, picture in pieces. A learning design session – be it Carpe Diem, CAIeRO, D4AL – should create an opportunity to take the pieces out of the box, turn them over, find the straight edges, start to put them together. Too often we have our own pieces or a few clusters of similar shapes and colours but not the whole story. Mapping out the design of the curriculum,  and ensuring alignment along vertical as well as horizontal axes, ensures consistent and coherent  learning expectations, modules appropriately sequenced and assessments spread out rather than bunched together. Having all the module leaders for Year one together meant these conversations could happen and reinforces the value of beginning the learning design process before validation rather than afterwards.

Learning doesn’t just happen. Put students in a room – be it a traditional teaching room or a 21st century redesigned educational  landscape – and learning is unlikely to take place without intervention. Multiple myths abound such as ‘build it and they will come’. Well, they might arrive but what happens next? It’s like online discussion.  How often do you hear the line ‘I set up a forum but no one used it – so I didn’t bother again’. We should collect and debunk these and other myths such as:

• All students are digital natives
• They won’t do it if it’s not assessed
• Face to face is best

The Degree Apprenticeship has been a great opportunity to look at a programme in its entirety. It’s put together those who don’t often meet. TEL people talk to other TEL people. Academics stay in their subject tribes and territories.  East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.* It takes something new to break down the barriers. We need to talk. We like to talk. We want to talk about learning design. It’s the foundation of the student experience.

We might rename D4AL as SATT – Sit Around the Table and Talk!

On Friday (24/11/17) colleague Patrick Lynch and myself will be in Oxford for a meeting of the Learning Design – Cross Institutional Network (LD-CIN). Set up in 2015, this open network shares learning design shaped information, tools and ideas, is an international community of learning design practice. Presenting on learning analytics to inform learning design, Patrick will explore the statement

“Arguably then learning design needs learning analytics in order to validate itself. However it also works the other way: learning  analytics cannot be used effectively without an understanding of the underlying learning design, including why the particular tools, activities and content were selected and how they were deployed.” Sclater (2017).

We’re demonstrating an agile responsive approach so I’ll be collecting live data in the form of feedback throughout our session as well as making notes during the day and possibly some live blogging as well. Follow the hashtag #LDCIN and check out the LD-CIN site for further information.

Next week, the story of the Degree Apprenticeship development continues with more of the big programme-wide questions. In particular how technology might enhance or increase the challenges of part-time blended learning.

• What can be done online which can’t be done face to face?
• Vice versa
• Where can technology provide value?
• Where will the on-campus experience have most value?
• How can student community be achieved?

See you 1st December.

24 shopping days to Christmas…

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Rudyard Kipling Barrack-room ballads, 1892  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrack-Room_Ballads 

Niall Sclater (2017) Learning Analytics Explained Routledge

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Warning; may or may not include technology #lthechat

We interrupt this blog schedule to bring you some post #lthechat thoughts.

There was a lot of chatter!

Put Wednesdays at 8.00 on Twitter in your calendar. #lthechat is a synchronous discussion around selected learning and teaching in higher education topics. Check out the hashtag #lthechat or the accompanying blog https://lthechat.com/ and Twitter page @lthechat.  #lthechat even has its own bird!

Started by Chrissi Neranszi @chrissinerantzi and Sue Beckingham @suebecks  in 2014, the discussion has become part of the working week for hundreds of tweeters and  I’ve been lucky enough to facilitate a couple of sessions. This weeks followed on from last week’s blogpost  Bought to you by the Letter T which reflected on the similarities between Technology and Teaching brought about by our recent restructure at the University of Hull.

The letters TEL (past team) and LTE (current team) are T for technology and T for teaching. This weeks chat looked at using LTE to talk about TEL. Confused? Stay with me…

Warning, May or may not include Technology asked 6 questions:

1. Please share your understanding of the term learning design
2. Where do aspects of learning design fit in your role?
3. Which models, tools, authors, have informed your thinking about LD?
4.  How have you evaluated the effectiveness of your LD interventions?
5. How do you introduce the concept of LD to academics/how would you not talk about it?
6. Name one thing you’ll take away from this #lthechat tonight.

With ten minutes on each one, the session kicked off a debate on the phrase ‘learning design’ – an example of the discussions we hoped to generate.

At Hull we’re developing an approach to teaching enhancement which we’ve called Design for Active Learning (D4AL).  The approach is based on curriculum alignment; you have the learning outcomes and assessments – D4AL is about the activities students do. Conversations tend to be initially about teaching rather than technology and this chat aimed to provide opportunities for sharing LD/D4AL practices.

With over 800 tweets in total you could say #lthechat is becoming a victim of its own success. While you’re trying to keep up with multiple ‘live’  conversations, and swapping tweets between them, the rest of the chat is continuing. It’s becoming a case of continual catch-up and I’m still working my way through the Storify which can be accessed here https://storify.com/LTHEchat/lthe-chat-no-92 

This is where I must say thanks to the ‘behind-the-scenes’ team this semester – Jenny Lewin-Jones @JennyLewinJone  Rebecca Sellers @becksell2001 and Scott Turner @scottturneruon  without whom the coordination and dissemination of #lthechat would not be possible.  

No other hour of the week flies by so fast!

I followed Ale Armellini’s contribution with interest. With the University of Northampton adopting institution wide Active Blended Learning (ABL) there’s much to learn from their  approach, outline in this report Overcoming barriers to student engagement with Active Blended Learning and the video explaining ABL to students.

However, it’s rare to find true pedagogical innovation e.g. flipped learning which was in all the media a few years ago is not so different to setting homework or seminar reading. The #lthechat showed is that for everyone who is new to the principles of activity based  learning, there are those who’ve been doing it for years

What the chat also revealed was how much good practice is already happening. It’s all out there but often in pockets, but not disseminated outside teaching teams or even sometimes beyond individual practice. The scholarship of teaching and learning in HE remains a niche area with work to be done around the sharing of practice, knowledge and experiences.

Speaking of niches, #lthechat assumes an internet connection and a Twitter account for contributing. All that vital but virtual energy is restricted to the participants who in themselves demonstrate high levels of digital fluency making digital differences in practice another key area to be addressed.

One further question is should academics take courses on LD/D4AL or should teaching teams include LD/D4AL specialists to work in tandem?

As the tweets below indicate, there may be other opportunities to continue the discussions around these topics.

In the meantime, there’ll be another #lthehat next week so don’t forget – tut Wednesdays at 8.00 on Twitter in your calendar.

 

brought to you by the letter T

image from https://pixabay.com/en/t-letter-alphabet-alphabetically-1015548/

Restructure complete. For TEL read LTE (Learning and Teaching Enhancement) For TEL Advisers read Teaching Enhancement Advisers.  T for Technology. T for Teaching.

What’s the difference or have they become one and the same? However you view learning and teaching in a digital age, the strength of our new team is how we can be both. We are all aspects of T, in varying degrees of experience and expertise.

I’ve written about the risk of TEL people not getting out and about enough Invisible Tribes and Territories of the TEL People You know how it is. Like attracts like. It seems being badged with technology can make it harder to reach the late tech-adopters, those who tend to self- exclude from anything with a digital flavour. Yet once you get talking about teaching, the technology is usually in there – it just sometimes needs a different approach.

image from https://pixabay.com/en/cloud-finger-touch-cloud-computing-2537658/

Design for Active Learning (D4AL) is our solution to TEL isolation.

Partly a response to TEF flags signalling areas to be addressed, D4AL emerged from conversations around adopting a pedagogy first-approach. Instead of going in with tech-first solutions, unlikely to resonate with the digitally shy and resistant, this is an approach to teaching enhancement which focuses on student learning activities. These might include technology, or might not. The plan is to open doors, get to the table and so far, it seems to be working.

D4AL has provenance.

One of the most enduring education development papers, Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles For Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, has us up there at Number 3 Good practice encourages active learning. 

image from https://pixabay.com/en/lego-colors-toys-build-up-disorder-688154/

The D4AL Evidence Hub is looking like an education developers pic n’ mix. Primarily about brokering discussions, the first layer of contact is a @50 minute introductory session. A conversation around the table –  tea and biscuits – coffee and cake – with a question format similar to this.

Tell us…

• What is the context?
  • Where are you now?
  • Where do you want to be?
• Who are your students?
• How can our evidence hub help?
• How will you know success? What does it look like?

Take assessment.  Topics could be team approaches to marking, encouraging students to engage with feedback, alignment with learning outcomes, suggestions for feeding forward or the purposes of the assessment e.g. is it measuring performance or looking for evidence of learning.

In the words of educationalist Graham Gibb, the best way to enhance teaching can be to rethink assessment.

Our Evidence Hub is full of resources. We’re also developing a system for sharing practice. We want to be called on not only for problems but to discover and disseminate what works well too.

Technology has a place. Take assessment again. We can provide support with digital feedback; developing banks of comments or exploring audio or video. We’ll look at arguments for and against, time saved versus time spent. Sometimes investment in a new way of working might not seem worth it but X in Y did Z and are happy to talk to you.

Previous TEL identities and knowledge are still relevant, just not centre stage.

image from https://pixabay.com/en/theatre-show-concert-stage-2617116/

After the introductory session comes the bespoke workshop and we’ve been busy here too. Over the last year, Liz Bennett and Sue Foley from the University of Huddersfield have delivered us a D4 Curriculum Design session and Ale Armellini from the University of Northampton ran us a half day CAIeRO taster. We’ve experience of  Carpe Diem and plans to develop discussion prompt cards like those used in UCL’s ABC Connected Curriculum. We’ve also spent two days Digital Storytelling with Chris Thompson from Jisc, definitely want to offer this again, while in November Chrissi Neranzti is introducing us to Lego Serious Play.

Our D4AL workshops will have a blended element so content can be front-loaded prior to face-to-face time. They’ll be hands on and experiential, based on connectionist approaches shown to enhance engagement. I’ve been a supporter of #creativeHE for several years ,as well as facilitator on their open online courses. and keen to explore some new ways of working, There could be post-it notes, story boards, lego, prompt cards, labyrinths and poetry alongside plain paper and pen plus ideas from this Activity book from the University of Stanford’s Reflect Imagine Try sessions.

None of this means TEL has gone away. We might be stepping out of our TEL Tribe, taking tentative footsteps away from our TEL Territory, but in doing so, we’re hoping to attract those who say they ‘don’t do technology’. The number of NAYs, those who are neither Residents nor Visitors but Not Yet Arriveds is higher than many TEL Tribes might realise or believe. The next blog post will be looking at digital disconnection in 2017 in more detail.

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*   Chickering, A. W. and Gamson, Z. F. (1987) Seven Principles For Good Practice in Undergraduate Education Washington Center News Fall 1987

#lthechat next week (Wednesday 11th October 8.00-9.00pm) is on the topic of learning design 

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