All entries for Friday 28 October 2011

October 28, 2011

10 essential questions to answer when designing a teaching and learning technology project

How can we achieve worthwhile and sustained change in how students and teachers use technology for learning? Often projects fail because they are un-clear in their scope and objectives. For example, they may not really comprehend the depth and significance of the changes that are required for success. Often they work against deeply ingrained habits and attitudes, without including strategies and techniques for encouraging non-trivial change (there are some really good strategies, for example drawing upon the open-space learning approach).

When designing a project, try to get thorough answers to these questions - not just at the start of the project, but periodically revisited during the project to ensure that you learn and adapt to the changes that you are causing or are being affected from external forces (for example new tech that appears during the life of the project).

Thanks to Emma King (Learning and Development Centre, Warwick) and staff from the Warwick Institute of Education for allowing me to try this out on them!

A. Understanding and stating your aims:

1. What is your intervention aiming to change? Be specific…

a. attitudes;
b. beliefs;
c. behaviours;
d. capabilities (a repeatable, reliable ability to undertake a key learning action - individually or collectively);
e. a specific result (e.g. exam marks).

2. Who/what needs to change to achieve this? Be specific and comprehensive…

a. people;
b. technologies;
c. places (online, offline and augmented);
d. ideas, concepts, language, theories;
e. relationships/networks (amongst a, b, and c).

3. What type of change? Projects often combine these, but need to be clearer about them...

a. Optimise existing practice, tweak existing technologies, make more efficient and manageable;
b. Increase the adoption of an existing practice, more people working in this way, better connected, exploiting network effect;
c. New different design, more appropriate, achievable, useful, powerful - the most difficult type of change.

B. Feasibility:

4. Is there a necessary timescale – what is it?

5. What’s the scope of these changes? Do they need to change just in your context (e.g. your module) or in wider contexts (across the department, the university, globally)?

6. What resources are available to you (including your own power to get things changed, the good-will of others, your own level of commitment, the need for change, an effective team with diverse skills)?

7. How will these resources need to be sustained over time?

C. Strategy:

8. Can you start of with a smaller more achievable change and then grow the intervention through a series of iterations? (the Agile method).

9. What changes (e.g. skills, technologies) should you make early on so as to make the rest of the project more achievable?

10. Are there pre-existing trends that you might exploit – for example behaviours and technologies in an unrelated domain that could transfer to your domain? (cross-pollination).