IRRODL Volume 12, Number 2

Various Authors
2011 International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning  
We are pleased to present another general issue of IRRODL to our research community, distance educators, and general readers throughout the world. This delightful general issue has a variety of themes, including instructional design for distance education, support for distributed adjunct faculty, and mobile learning. The first research article by Simon Paul Atkinson presents a new and, I think, a very practical instructional design model for online education. His article, "Embodied and Embedded
more » ... Theory in Practice: The Student-Owned Learning-Engagement (SOLE) Model," describes the rationale for, and a good description of, a toolkit that is designed to help instructors and designers create online courses that make the most of both the technical and pedagogical affordances of the Web. Our second research article challenges us to look beyond the hype and sales talk too often associated with online learning and to confront the challenges of high dropout and low prestige and lack of acceptance by mainstream academics. In "Head of Gold, Feet of Clay: The Online Learning Paradox," researchers Thomas Michael Power and Anthony Morven-Gould propose a way out of John Daniel's iron triangle of cost, accessibility, and quality by combining both synchronous and asynchronous models to create "blended" online learning design (BOLD). Many models of distance education achieve their economy of scale and reduce costs by employing part-time adjunct faculty. Thus, they are a critical and arguably the most important component of any distance education system. However providing adequate training and support to these distributed educators has long been a challenge to distance education systems. We are pleased to publish two articles that investigate ways to support adjunct faculty. Editorial Terry Anderson Editor, IRRODL IRRODL Editorial, 12.2 Anderson iii compared, thus providing invaluable information for those wishing to add a synchronous component to their distance delivery. We trust you will enjoy these articles, pass the links and a free subscription suggestion to your colleagues, and have an opportunity to thank the many who bring you IRRODL without charge through their gifts and skills of sponsorship, scholarship, review, editing and production. Abstract The demands on academic staff in all sectors to adopt best ODL practices to create effective and efficient models of learning in the face of increasing external pressures show no signs of abating. The massification of higher education, diversified access, and pressures to meet institutional visions and research objectives demand of teaching staff an increasingly public design process subject to peer review in numerous forms. Expectations of systematized pedagogical planners and embedded templates of learning within the institutional virtual learning environments (VLEs) have, so far, failed to deliver the institutional efficiencies anticipated. In response, a new model of learning design is proposed with a practical, accessible, and freely available "toolkit" that embodies and embeds pedagogical theories and practices. The student-owned learningengagement (SOLE) model aims to support professional development within practice, constructive alignment, and holistic visualisations, as well as enable the sharing of learning design processes with the learners themselves. Embodied and Embedded Theory in Practice: The Student-Owned Learning-Engagement (SOLE) Model Atkinson Embodied and Embedded Theory in Practice: The Student-Owned Learning-Engagement (SOLE) Model Atkinson 6 The SOLE model was borne out of a desire to make the learning design process transparent to students, to encourage staff to share patterns of learning with each other, and to provide a basis for self-evaluation and development of specific learning designs. It is no coincidence that the SOLE model places the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) at the centre. In each constructively aligned course or unit of learning, the resulting pattern of activity will be different because the learning outcomes, the assessment designed to elicit evidence of attainment, and the patterns of teaching required to support that process will each be different. The SOLE model is, therefore, explicitly a model, not a template. The model can, and should, be adapted by staff to suit the particular approach to learning required by their students in any given context. The resulting pedagogical patterns should reflect the nature of their discipline, students' existing context, and the specific teaching environment. The model seeks not to restrict, but rather to illuminate, the practices of staff, and so encourage effective practices. The model is not concerned with the design of specific learning activities, although it provides references to effective resources, but the model does advocate, as appropriate, a balance between the different modes of student engagement. The model is not prescriptive, and its associated toolkit is therefore open and flexible. It is possible for course design or teaching teams to change and modify any aspect of the toolkit, a simple spreadsheet, to suit their needs. The priority, however, is to provide staff with a model of effective practice so that one might be justifiably concerned about the quality of the student learning experience if the toolkit illustrated a consistently unbalanced approach. As Dick et al. suggest, "Instructional design models are based, in part, on many years of research on the learning process. Each component of the model is based on theory and, in most instances, on research that demonstrates the effectiveness of that component." (2004, p. 14). An imbalance in the elements of the model requires attention. The SOLE model is, then, a visual representation of the different modes of learning engagement that one might be expected to promote for a holistic learning experience. The model provides a conceptual map of learning engagement aligned to learning outcomes and assessment. The associated toolkit produces a visual representation of these elements of learning engagement for diagnostic, developmental, descriptive, and evaluative purposes. At the heart of each unit of learning is the graduate profile wrapped in the articulated programme outcomes, and subsequent course outcomes, all of which should be able to demonstrate some form of alignment. The model illustrates nine elements of learning engagement. These are visually represented in a uniform way and reflect the underlying premise that a balanced approach to learning engagement is preferable. However, it is recognised that each instance of learning design will produce a different representation of the learning experience. The associated toolkit illustrates this notion of balance further. Barker, P. (2008). Re-evaluating a model of learning design.
doi:10.19173/irrodl.v12i2.1112 fatcat:xvclc6tdynfijghtizd3wl6t5e