LEARNING DESIGN AND THE TENSION BETWEEN STRATEGY AND DIDACTICS

Year
2020
Pages
Volume 2, pp.285-295
Abstract

Enhancing courses with technology in a manner that supports students’ learning, has clear underlying pedagogical values, and is aligned with a university strategy for course development is far from trivial. This paper describes and evaluates a Learning Design approach to such a process — a process that was initiated by a university's strategic goal of providing more and better use of technology for education. At the heart of the process is the Learning Design educational development methodology. The paper discusses the tensions between the goals of the process: learning activities supporting students’ learning and the university’s overall strategic goal regarding technology. We find that although tensions exist, they do not hinder the design of better teaching using technology, and we conclude that Learning Design is a useful methodology to address these tensions.