Developing curriculum for deep learning: the knowledge revival - book overvew

This is an open access book, 'Developing curriculum for deep learning' comes at a time when educators need to think about the purposes of education and their role as teachers.

The book is published by in 2025 Springer as part of their Springer Brief series in Education. The book has  5 chapters, written by eminent educator scholars - 

• Tim Surma ,
• Claudio Vanhees ,
• Michiel Wils ,
• Jasper Nijlunsing ,
• Nuno Crato ,
• John Hattie ,
• Daniel Muijs ,
• Elizabeth Rata ,
• Dylan Wiliam ,
• Paul A. Kirschner

All contribute to the chapters.

The short introductory chapter provides a rationale for the book along with a brief overview of the book's direction.

The next chapter summarises 'how knowledge matters' . It begins with a summary of how human's learn from a neuroscience perspective. The importance of attaining prior knowledge is introduced and discussed along with the importance of reading. The sociological and democratic perspectives of knowledge are also introduced.

Chapter 3 connects how curriculum is used to bring about the attainment of knowledge. The various ways curriculum contribute are introduced and discussed including the aspects of horizontal and vertical coherence and their relationships to disciplinary knowledge.

Chapter 4 provides concluding remarks and references.

The last chapter provides an executive summary. It reiterates the ways, perspectives on learning, and sociological and democratic aspects shift the ways knowledge is expressed in the curriculum. It argues for the need to ensure that there is always a knowledge rich curriculum in education, to assure the development of the individual and in turn, society at large.

The short book provides a good foundation, especially now in the age of AI, to ensure that as humans, we still treasure learning and knowledge. Worth a read for all educators. 

 

Case studies - AI - special issue of International Journal of Designs for Learning,

 The International Journal of Designs for Learning published a special issue on Gen AI in learning design at the end of 2025.

There are 30 articles, including 6 'short-form design cases.

There are 8 case studies followed by a special section with 16 articles on learning design for Gen AI.

An editorial by the special edition editors, opens the issue. Articles and themes across the issue are summarised

-Gen AI as a facilitation tool for learning workflow

- Gen AI as a site for AI literacy and critical thinking

- Gen AI as a creative and material partner

- Gen AI, ethics and the work of 'holding the line'

- Designing with Gen AI in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Of note for learning design in the VET  context are the articles:

- G. Fares' article Ch(AI)r: Advancing furniture design through AI craftsmanship - using poetic prompts to generate images using Midjourney and DALL-E. The images are then used as starting points for students' engagement with materials to create a chair.

-  Capturing elusive technology: designing a course on Ai for learning and development practitioners by Da Silva - the learning design of an asynchronous online course for learning desigers.

-  J. Yu and H. Rho on 'just seeing can be deceiving: Gen AI - supported design case for critical visual literacy -  uses AI as a 'cognitive partner' to intentionally create misleading versions of students' data visualisation to encourage and learn critiqueing skills.

-  R. M. Quintana, C. Quintana and M. McCurry on 'unpacking design of an online course series - Gen AI as a learning design partner - presents and discusses the opportunities and applications of Gen AI for supporting and enhancing learning design activities

- Implementing AI course assistances: a rapid design case from concept to full rollout at Los Angeles Pacific University by G. Henshaw and M. Wilday. Used AI as a Socratic partner to support greater student engagement, critical thinking and motivation. Involved faculty as co-designers. 

-  Davis. J. Utilization of ChatGPT to create materials of flipped classroom. - Use to revise pre-class resources and found that develop that it as effective in saving resource development time, improvement in student outcomes noted and quiz questions did not have as many mistakes. 

- Brinkman, E. - redesigning an introduction to writing assignment in the age of AI - emphasised the use of AI as a writing collaborator. Worksheets, scaffolds for learning and prompts are shared in the article. 

- Designing for AI literacy: a modular, Gen AI integrated course interdisciplinary graduate students in education by N. King and J. Yan. - describes the development of a graduate seminar to explore what Ai is and how to use it. 

Many of the articles provide good examples for educators as to how to incorporate AI into courses/programmes. Projects drew on disciplinary and constructivist pedagogies, with AI used to support rather than replace learning. Overall, a good resource to show how AI integration needs to be founded on Ai literacies, good understanding of pedagogy and the learning contexts, and the reflective practice required to utilise technology to enhance learning. 

Handbook on personalised learning - book overview

 The Handbook on Personalised Learning, edited by M. L. Bernacki, C. Walkington, A. Emery and L. Zhang and published by Routledge late in 2025 is a timely resource. Editors and authors are all based at  US of A Universities. 

A preview pdf with the preface summarising the book's content, Chapter one by J. L. Plass and F. Froehlich on 'Trends in personalised learning' is available. 

There are 7 sections in the book The first section has chapters to define and provide the theoretical background for individualised learning.

Section 2 reports on 2 approaches, exemplifying what personalised learning can achieve. The contexts are digital and game-based learning environments).

Section 3 centres around the psychological theories of learning on how individuals learning and what characteristics support learning.

Section 4 covers instructional design principles for individualises/personalised learning

Section 5 digs deeper into learning design for specific disciplines - math, reading, social studies, computer science).

Section 6 revolve around the advantages of personalised learning

Section 7 has a focus on the policies and environmental factors which support/or disrupt tje implementation of personalised learning. 

Chapter 1 - lays out the definition of personalised learning, along with how it is designed. Integrates the contribution of Gen AI into the mix, how can Gen AI be leveraged to support personalised learning and especially to provide greater accuracy for adaptive learning - which has been a major challenge for personalised learning platforms. 

 A book setting down some of the precepts and foundations for personalised learning with the inclusion of Gen AI and its potential. 

Plans for 2026

Back into the fray after a few weeks back in the home country to support by aging mother. I am looking forward to what this year will bring. 

Progrramme review and redevelopment will take up much of my time. It is a great opportunity to get to know a degree programme well and to built relations with the teachers. Professional Development for our teachers will revolve around AI. We need to develop a good understanding of what, how and when to use AI. The selling point for AI is that it can be used to take some of the workload off teachers. However, it can also add to teachers' workload, especially if the effect of AI on assessments is not worked through. 

On the research front, our AI projects continue with work on personalised learning based on Cogniti and continuance of our work to develop AI chatbots to support specific disciplines and learning activities. Next month, I will be sending out a call for chapters towards a book to collate initiatives and perspectives on deploying AI to support personalised learning. The goal will be to publish this book early 2028.

I am also working on co-editing a book that records the many initiatives and projects undertaken between the initiation and cessation of the Reform in Vocational Education. Through the 5 -6 years across the reform, the new entities which were formed, have worked conscientiously to improve vocational education across NZ. Therefore it important to archive these in one package, as many entities  no longer exist beyond the end of 2025. Their work either disappears or is curated in sites hosted by other institutions and the knowledge and wisdom of their staff and communities of experts is dispersed and rearranged in the new configurations for Aotearoa VET.. 

It will be another busy year but one that already has several objectives to reach. There is much work to be done with respect to learning design and curriculum development as we normalise the use of AI across the institution and VET along with the business as usual objectives to ensure aspects of cultural competencies, academic literacies and sustainability are also woven through the curriculum.  

Using AI to streamline constructive alignment and design portfolio-ready tasks

 Notes from a webinar organised by Eportfolio Australia on the topic of using AI to streamline constructive alignment and design portfolio-ready tasks.

The workshop is facilitated by Marty Sison who is a learning designer at Charles Darwin University.

The workshop outcomes are to use Gen AI to draft learning objectives from learning outcomes and content - then learning activities and following on with portfolio-ready tasks.

Steps to engage learners are to create learning objectives, then ensure there are learning checkpoints and follow through with learning portfolios. 

Used a padlet activity to define learning design terms. Then shared how padlet can be used to check if students are meeting the learning objectives by putting their ratings into each week's learning objectives. 

When AI is used, unit learning outcomes and content topics + prompt = learning objectives. Prompts were stored in a spread sheet, which was also formatted to collate the various responses and tables created by CoPilot. Advocated for using spreadsheets as it puts everything in one place. 

Demonstrated how unit outcomes and content can be generated using Copilot running on ChatGPT5.0 including evaluating the AI responses backwards. Then learning objectives for each week can be generated. 

Discussed learning checkpoints for active learning. Important to have assessment, feedback, external, internal feedback and help learners understand these. Should have authentic relating questions and/or concept reflection questions. 

Demonstrated how the connected learning checkpoints and activities can be created using CoPilot. Questions and answers were provided.

The spreadsheet created can then be used in turn to create experiences that can be represented through a portfolio. The learning portfolio helps to make learning visible. It can capture both the knowledge attained and the paths taken, turning multiple ways of representing growth into persuasive evidence.

Learning portfolios can be used as a collection of evidence, triangulated to learning objectives and be am authentic narrative of learning /growth and a persuasive showcase.

Therefore, the learning outcomes + content topics + learning objectives + learning checkpoints + prompt = portfolio tasks to evidence learning.

Demonstrated how the previous items along with relevant prompt helps to generate a range of portfolio assessments. 

For advise on prompt engineering, generally by grounded in your work. Always ask AI to evaluate and rationalise its decisions so that you can track things back. Control the output so that what is generated meets your needs and you do not have to reformate the AI response (e.g. table, column/row contents etc.) . Keep a record of the prompts so that you can recycle them. 

Interesting presentation. Will need to have a good play with our own content to see how the workflow can be adapted to our needs. 

Guides from Deakin University - Gen AI in work-integrated learning

The Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University has published a series of guides on Gen AI in work-integrated learning.

The resources are for Higher Education/University staff, students and workplace industry partners. There are four sets of guides:

- for ensuring academic integrity and assessment security with online delivery

- assessing work-integrated learning programmes - a guide to effective assessment design

- inclusive assessments

- reimaging exams - workshop resources.

All in there are good recommendations. Although pitched at the higher education sector, the work-integrated and inclusive assessment sections are easily generalisable to other contexts.

Developing curriculum for deep learning - overview of open access Springer brief

 In tandem with the recent blogs with overviews of recent scholarly books on embodiment and being and becoming through higher education, this book 'developing curriculum for deep learning: the knowledge revival' brings a school-based context. 

The book is open access and written by a range of authors from Europe (T, More - Belgium; N. Crato, Portugal, D. Muijs, UK; D. Wiliam, UK; P.A. Kirschner, Netherlands), Australia (J. Hattie) and New Zealand (E. Rata), many with scholarly contributions to the educational literature across many years. 

There are five chapters, beginning with a summary and ending with a chapter of concluding remarks.

The second chapter argues for the need to ensure that the pursuit of knowledge is not left out in a curriculum crowded with many needs. The third chapter sets out the relationships between knowledge and the school curriculum. The fourth chapter has concluding remarks to close the argument.

The last executive summary lays out the reasons knowledge matters from the perspectives of learning (developing our minds as humans); sociology (knowledge contribution to society); democracy (to bring about better lives for all). The importance of the curriculum in ensuring knowledge is included is then discussed with the need to establish a knowledge rich curriculum through the school years. 

Overall, good background on the aspect of knowledge in education. Its importance, role in learner's formative years, contribution to societal function. and the future of the human race. 

Developing curriculum for deep thinking - book overview

In this 'age of AI ascendence'  more than anytime perhaps in human history, the importance of how we learn knowledge and what is required to learn it, is more important than ever.

This Open Access Springer brief - Developing curriculum for deep learning:The knowledge revival has chapters written by authors from Europe (T, Surma, C. Vanhees, M, Wils, J, Nijlunsing, N. Crato, D, Muijs, D. Wiliam, P. A. Kirschner) Australia (J. Hattie) and New Zealand. (E. Rata).

Although the chapters have the school context at the forefront, the many concepts introduced and discussed has relevance across the all educational sectors. The books main premise is that it is important to ensure curriculum is 'knowledge-rich'. In doing, the attainment of knowledge helps to drive the learning (acquisition and practice) of crucial cognitive or thinking skills. 

There are five chapters.

After a short introductory chapter the following chapters discuss:

- How knowledge matters

- knowledge and the curriulum

Then two chapter - concluding remarks and an executive summary close the book.

Therefore the book is a short treatise (less than 100 pages) presenting the argument for the importance of ensuring that knowledge is made visible across the curriculum, and the need for content richness, coherence across the curriculum, and clarity of purpose for learning knowledge. 

2024 review

 A rather busy year, filled with leading an interesting project - supporting foundation/bridging learners using AI -, a flurry of work in curriculum/learning design as all of this returns back to us post Te Pūkenga disestablishment, and participation in a range of relevant and important professional development opportunities.

As I write this, there is no greater detail on what happens to the various polytechnics and industry training organisations (ITOs) post Te Pūkenga disestablishment, apart from the brief details from the consultation information provided in September. The government's budget going into the next few years provide some inkling of what may happen to the Workforce Development Councils (WDCs) and Centres for Vocational Education Excellence (CoVEs). WDCs funding ends 2026 but they will likely continue due to their essential role as standards setting bodies. However, their actual roles going into the future are unclear. The CoVeEs for construction ((ConCOVE) and FF CoVE (food and fibre) will likely cease to exist beyond 2025. Both the CoVEs have funded a range of important vocational education and training research projects and it is a shame that they will not be continuing on to act on the recommendations and findings.

AI has been prominent across the year. At my institute, we have run a number of department focused and institute-wide research tools or teaching and learning AI integration workshops. Our staff capability runs the usual gamut from utter rejection of AI to having several with high levels of understanding and application towards using AI to support research or teaching/learning. 

VET like all other education context, must make key decisions about the role of AI and how it should be/ or can be leveraged to support teaching and learning. The 'holy grail' of education, personalised learning for every learner' is availed if AI is used carefully to augment and support learning - see this summary, one of many models, that shift teaching and learning from 'factory - one-size fits all' to individualised mastery learning for each learner.

Hence, another busy year but looking forward to next year, when hopefully, we begin to have productive conversations in shifting the current way teaching and learning occurs, towards a more learner and learning-centred model.

instructional design unleashed - link and brief overview

This is an open access book (provided through UTS library). Th book is authored by A. J. Mangtani and published by Springer.

It is quite a large book - over 600 pages long with chapters collated into two sections.

The first section has 5 chapters covering the science of instructional design. Chapters include overviews of the anatomy of instructional design, the science of learning and its theories, learner attributes and learner modalities, pedagogical, andragogical and heutagogical approaches and Universal Design of Learning (UDL). All in, these chapters provide good coverage of the foundational knowledge and applications for instructional design. 

The second section has 6 sections and these cover the 'art' of instructional design, that is the 'how to' aspects of instructional design. Chapters cover instructional design models, objective taxonomy, storyboarding, assessment, feedback and evaluation approaches, publishing the learning journey and AI in instructional design.

Overall, the book covers the essentials of the traditional approaches to instructional design and would be useful as a text book for instructional design students and a reference for educators who are designing meaningful and engaging learning.

Gen AI and education: Digital pedagogies, teaching innovation and learning design - springer brief - book overview

This book  by Professor B. Mairēad Pratschke, arrived late last week, just in time for a wet weekend. It is a Springer brief of just over 100 pages, making it a quick but worthwhile read.

The book has 7 chapters. 

Chapter 1 covers the historical evolution of AI in education, a good overview of Gen AI (GAI is used in the book) and a summary of the tenets of digital pedagogy (including connectivism, social constructivism). The chapter closes with the call and rationale for all educators to attain GAI competencies and that its introduction into learning must be teacher-led, not as directives from above.

The second chapter undertakes the unpacking of the implications of GAI on the learning ecosystem. The term AI ecosystem is used to describe how GAI is integrated into teaching platforms and tools, the implications for undertaking this type of innovation, and provides some indications of how AI will impact on education as a whole. We are already able to customise AI bots but in the very near future, embodied AI and the opportunity to not just integrate GAI but to create new forms of education.

In the third chapter, the concept of human-computer hybrid is explored. In doing so, humans (and AI) draw on each other's strengths, leading to true synergy between biological/human and digital/machine/AI. The developments already available are summarised - including ways Gen AI is trained, the role of prompt engineering, Khan academy's experiments with personalised learning using AI, Poe and Hugging Face as the options to create your own bot, expert systems and examples in deploying Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). A refresh of TPACK is proposed to become TPAIK, whereby 'knowledge' is shifted to be 'intelligence'. This leads to thinking about the relationships between technology/ntelligence/knowledge and how these are part of the learning design. Who creates intelligence/knowledge and what is the role of technology in the co-relationship?

In chapter 4, learning design to bring about the connections between educational theory, and digital pedagogy and practice is proposed. The concept of Generativism is proposed to bring GAI into the design, delivery and assessment of learning. The ABC learning design framework (with the learning activities of acquisition, collaboration, discussion, investigation, practice and production from Laurrilard's work) with GAI added, is provided as an example of how GAI contributes to each of the learning activities.

Chapter 5 undertakes an exploration and discussion of the impact of GAI specifically on personalised and peer learning. Intelligent tutoring systems, adaptive learning platforms, integrated assistants and tutors, standalone assistants and tutor, along with aspects of social learning, the implications of affective computing, social AI, intelligent communities and collaborative learning (see Sharple's work) are all introduced, discussed and evaluated. Each has a role, the importance is in selection and emphasis and of the roles of AI supporter and learner. Who has autonomy and what is the role of the educator when personalised learning environments become the norm.

The next chapter focuses on assessing learning. Congruent to the findings from our own AI projects, the emphasis in the AI age, is to place importance on the process of learning, rather than the outputs of learning. The ABC framework is again used, to provide guidance as to how assessments change due to AI and how AI can be used to support the assessment process.

In the last chapter, 'embedding AI', the many themes and threads across the book are brought together. Actions for educators and administrators are provided to help move education into the GIA age. 

In sum, a good book providing a summary of what has occurred thus far with good advice on the way forward. The book is short and therefore not too daunting for the practitioner/teacher/academic leader/head of school etc. to read through. There are good discussion anchors throughout the book and these will be useful as the difficult conversations with on GAI's role in education begin to take place in earnest. 

Transforming architectural design through AI/Generative design technologies - Dr. Mazharuddin Syed Ahmed

 Notes from a presentation to Ara kaimahi (staff) and ākonga (students) by Dr. Mazharuddin Syed Ahmeh, our Building Information Management (BIM) tutor.

Mazhar presents on the fundamentals of AI, LLMs and Generative design. He also covers AI governance (privacy, ethics, hallucinations, and misinformation); and emerging AI and LLM tools / technologies of relevance to architecture. https://www.theb!m.com/BIM-For-Beginners https://bim-in-nz.squarespace.com/bimtools

Began with overview of he journey to BIM via BS in Civil Engineering and through to PhD in education at University of Canterbury.

Proposed that technology disruption is increasing in speed and the need to keep up with the fundamentals underlying technology. A disruptive technology is one that displaces an established technology and shakes up industry or a ground-breaking product that creates a completely new industry. Used the mail service as an example - moving from pigeon post/pony express, to the postal system and then digitally into email and across social media.

Summarised the technology revolutions across the last few centuries - industrial/steam (1760-1820), electricity (to 1900), computing (1900S), digital (today), and artificial intelligence (2025-2030?). For computing, it has shifted from mainframes in the 1960s to mini, personal (1980s), desktop/internet (1990s), mobile (2000s) and wearable/everywhere/cloud (2014+). A key would be increased computing power along with progress in computer science. Gardner hype cycle for 2024 indicates the innovation triggers, peak of inflated expectaions, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment and plateau of productivity (when citizen developers are able to utilise the technology). Humans adoption patterns can be summaries through the technology integration diffusion curve - innovators (techies), early adopters (visionaries) - the chasm - early majority (pragmatist), late majority and laggards (skeptics). 

Adoption of ChatGPT was the fastest - 1 million in 5 days, 100 million in 5 months, almost 7000 prompts a minute! - raising awareness of AI's potential into the mainstream.

Overviewed 'what is data' - presently much of data is unstructured and has had exponential growth, doubling every year. In comparison, traditional data, pre-digital, took 8000 years to double! Present human capability, makes it impossible for individuals to keep up with this volume of data being generated. The human brain has to take 'shortcuts' to help make decisions, leading to implicit or unconscious bias - of which are there many - see visualcapitalist for example!! One way to make sense of things is to use DIKW model - data, information (who, what, when, where), knowledge (how) and wisdom (why). Access to the internet (especially mobile access) is a precursor of individuals drawing on the knowledge of many - although there are implications if we move to 'onemind'.

Implications of AI on how technology is adopted and on jobs/ the world of work discussed. The need to attain data literacy is now paramount. In architecture, everything is data, every data follows a pattern, and every pattern can be modelled and predicted. Explained the concept of big data and data science principles. Defined and provided examples of LLMs (around since 2010) - large language models and their ability to predict 'the next word' based on word structure and sentence construction. Tokens serve as the fundamental units of text in LLMs. A token does not always represent a single word; it can also be made up of a group of characters. As a general rule, one toke is roughly 4 characters. 

ChatGPT/Copilot/Claude/Gemini prompts are more effective if they provide context, task, instruction, clarify, and refine. 

In human learning, we learn by observation, practice etc.to increase muscle memory and cognitive networks. Al-ML-Dl-Gen AL learnings through machine learning - recieve data, analyse, find patterns, make predictions, send answer. Provided examples of how ML is trained through supervised learning, with a 'reward model' used to refine the output. 'Transformers are used to interpret these outputs and convert to the type of response (text, pictures, multimodal etc.) required. AI moving into the near future able to undertake many of the functions of humans. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) still only able to undertake some functions, so no worries!! - for the moment. AI is still prone to generating mis-information, is somewhat unreliable and may create 'hallucinations'. Pluses of AI need to be balanced with some of the disadvantages of ethics, dependency on data quality, risk of bias, complexity of development and maintenance, lack of emotional intelligence. AI governance is important.

Closed with the potential of AI in architecture. Numerical calculations (numbers, abacus, slide rule, calculator, mobile phone, VR), construction documentation (sketch, to plan, CAD (1980), 3D modelling (1990), BIM bringing in may layers of building data (2005) allow for this data to be drawn on for AI. Therefore, physical structures (cars, buildings, machines) can have a digital twin. Digital data can be used not only in BIM but in the internet of things (ioT) - smart buildings, connected constructions sites etc. From concept, through the design, analysis, scheduling etc, all can be digitised through dimensions of BIM. The AI-assisted design cycle - design details, validation design etc. is possible. Shared examples of the application of AI to architechutral work tasks. 

AI literacy book

 This open source book - Towards AI literacy 101+ - creative and critical practices, perspectives and purposes contains a range of short stories on AI. Examples are provided as to the challenges and ways to define AI literacy and the many interpretations of AI literacy across various educational levels and disciplines. The range of articles show how diverse education actually is and that there is never a 'one size fits all' model. Education, by the grounding of its purpose, must be of relevance to learners and the communities it serves. Therefore, how each context needs to use and apply AI, provides how AI literacy could be introduced and integrated. 

The 'generic' skill or competency to come to grips with AI would be critical thinking. Again, to be able to think critically in various contexts, is variable. The discipline or subject is but a platform from which the development and application of critical thinking is grounded. Care there needs to be taken when designing learning, to ensure that there is a balance between discipline/subject-based 'situated learning' and to ensure that learners are provided with models and skills to 'cross the boundary' when they make shifts across  disciplinary fields.

Learning Design Voices -

 Learning Design Voices captures the perspecitves of learning designers post-pandemic. The book is open access and edited by South African learning designers/researchers T.Jaffer, S.C. Govender and L. Czerniewicz. 

After an introduction, the book has three sections (provocations).

The first provocation is 'what might learning design become in the post-COVID university? has five chapters. Each cover one of several themes -

1) increased visibility and value of learning designers due to the need to shift to flexible delivery models.

2) open learning design - on the margins

3) learning designer as pedagogical advisor

4) learning how to design learning through mimicry and mentoring

5) indigenous learning practices

The second focuses on compassionate learning design for unsettling times, with six chapters. The chapters focus on issues of equity, access, humanising learning, inclusivity and community.

The final provocation ' the challenge of designing experiences' has 13 chapters. Here, various examples, case studies and reflective studies are presented.

14) adapting ABC learning design

15) Using Laurillard's learning types

16) Rapid development prototype model

17) blended learning

18) elearning tools

19) knowledge-identity nexus

20) learner centred learning

21) authentic learning design

22) developing critique and argument

23) rethinking the textbook

24) digital divide and accessibility to print-based learning

25) ten principles of alternative assessment

26) reimagining authentic online assessments for large classes

27) inclusive online assessment

All in, may relevant chapters to inform the work of learning designers. 

Industry Practices, Processes and Techniques adopted in Education - book overview

 This book edited by K. MacCallum and D. Parsons and published in 2022 by Springer Link, brings some thoughtful concepts into the educational sphere.

The book has 18 chapters, categorised into 5 secsions. 

The first section, with three chapters, covers broad themes from industry in education

An introduction by the editors, opens the book with discussion around 'from the workplace to the classroom: how ideas from industry can inspire new kinds of learning'. The overall approach of the book, is to look at industry practices, especially from the IT and design areas, and how these may inform various aspects of school and tertiary education.

Then the second chapter 'can teaching the future of work make the future of work less uncertain?' is written by T. Butlser, M. Rorich, H. Sparks and M. Wadasinghe. Here, one of the rationales for the book is presented as education and workforce participation are interlinked. The rapid shifts through technological advances, places the onus on education to be better aligned to how the world of work is enacted.

Chapter 3 discusses 'from industry to academia: case studies of innovative practices in a digital context' with L. Antonczak, M. Neukam and S. Bolinger. Draws on case studies in France which highlight 'learning by doing', project-based learning and the development and support of heutagogy through mixed modes of learning. The advantages and challenges of each are derived from the cases to inform better development of digital teaching and learning.

The second section focuses on bridging industry approaches into the academy.

First up with G. J. Smolski and F. S. A. Brendolan on 'hybrid project management in post-secondary research and education'. The study looks into the introduction of a Gaming community of practice (CoP) into university teaching and learning. The CoP undertook the adoption and utilisation of Game development e.g. Agile etc, lean thinking, etc. and the chapter evaluates ths CoPs effectiveness.

Then a chapter on 'a systems engineering approach to blended learning design' by A. Mckay, D. B. Trowsdale, S. A. Carrie, G. Duff and C. E. Goodburn. Another example of applying industry models, in this case systems engineering to curriculum and learning design.

The last chapter in this section is by Y. Hoggarth on ' ambidextrous approaches to postgraduate programme development in higher education'. The development of post-graduate programmes is aided by the use of organisational ambidexterity which applies the work of March's concepts of exploitation and exploration. 

Section 3 centres around education and industry working together. The three chapters, describe ways in which industry standard operating processes, are incorporated into higher education curricula. 

L.Griffin, B. O'Farrell, C. Dunphy, P. Windle and E. de Lestar contribute on 'the agile semester, how we used agile as an engagement mechanism'.

The T. Cochrane and D. Sinfield present 'STUDIO602: A model for designing real world collaborations between higher education and industry'

Followed on by L. Major, A; Twiner and R. Wegerif with a chpater on 'simulated internships in schools: engaging learning with the world of work to promote collaborative creativity,'

The last chapter in this section is by S. McCotter on 'bringing the human resource management experience to the letcure hall through dramatic arts'.

Two chapters in the section on Agile learning in the school classroom are presented in this section. 

W. Wijnands and K. Fritsch with 'experience the 'flows' with eduScrum: about the why, how, and what of the empowerment of students and teachers.

Then N.Cosgrove, T. Cosgrove, S. Graham and P. Magnuson on 'agile in the Alps: stories of agile classroom for teaching and learning to administration.

The next section covers bridging experiences from the creative industries into teaching and learning

Begins with M.S. Howarth and A. Baslei on 'production of the 70:20:10 webinar.

Then M.Thorley contributes on 'developing music production expertise through virtual collaboration.

S. Mann, R. Mitchell, P. Eden-Mann, D. Hursthouse, M. Keretai, R. O'Brien and P. Osbourne present on 'educational design fictions: imagining learning futures'. Six educational design fictions are presented and the chapter then undertakes a discursive process to reflect on the processes and how these may inform and promote further discussion on the future of education.

The last three chapters revolve around industry-focused software engineering in the classroom

V.H. Grisales-Palacio, U/ Garcia-Zaragoza and H. Forero-Correa write on 'connecting industry and the academy through cyber-physical systems for disruptive education in machine automation.

The next chapter is by P. Kamthan on 'a framework for analysing and comparing software projects in academia and industry'.

The last chapter covers 'FDD, Crystal, DSDM- an educational perspective by V. Hurbungs and S. D. Nagowah.

In all, the book seeks to investigate how industry practices, may be used, not only in a vocational approach to replicate industry practices in the related disciplines, but how industry practices may be applied across diverse aspects of education to improve administrative tasks and processes, develop and meet strategical objectives, and contribute to teaching and learning from school to higher education. 

National Institute of Digital Learning (Ireland) - top 10 good reads for 2022

 The National Institute of Digital Learning maintains a topical blog with congent updates on the introduction, application and evaluation of digital technologies into education.

One of their latest blogs, summarises the top 10 reads in 2022, prefaced as -from theory to practice and back again. All the articles featured are open access and there is one recommendation from the 'closed' literature.

The blog provides links and undertakes a good overall survey across the articles (journals published in , countries etc.) and summary of each of the articles. Articles include two on the topic of learning design; Stephen Downes update on constructivism; topical ones on the metaverse and AI; and papers on research theory and how they can inform practice.

The art and science of learning design - book overview

 This book, The art and science of learning design - collates the latest in thinking and practice on learning design. The book is edited by MarceloMaina, Brock Craft and Yishay Mor published by Springer in 2015 in their technology enhanced learning (TEL) series.

The book has 15 chapters, organised into 3 sections. 

The first section, 'Theories' presents, discusses and critiques various theories of learning design

The first chapter covers "Reflections on the art and science of learning design and the Larnaca declaration" by James Dalziel. This chapter, summarises and updates on the 'Larnaca declaration' which arose through a 2012 meeting in Cyprus whereby a new framework, synthesised from research and practice, was proposed and ratified. The declaration drew on previous work undertaken through work undertaken by the author and the work of Professor Diana Laurillard. 

Next is a chapter on "Analysing the structural properties of learning networks"  by Peter Goodyear, Kate Thompson, David Ashe, Ana Pinto, Lucila Carvolho, Martin Parisio. Here methods used to evaluation and analysis of ideas sharing are introduced and discussed. The ability to deconstruct and understand how learning is designed by others, helps provide insights into future ways to bring about effective learning design.

Chapter three is on "Concretisation of design ideas in the context of educational technology design" by Tamar ronen-Fulmann and Yalel Kali. Argues that the act of design is itself, creates learning. Therefore, design, is a process of learning. Not so much the creation of the artefact, but the ways design is enacted, creates the opportunity to learn.

The last chapter in this chapter "A multi-dimensional space for learning design representations and tools" by Francesca Pozzi, Donaella Persico and Jeffrey Earp, follows on from the previous. Teachers design learning through a range of activities to produce lesson plans, learning modules, courses etc. In doing, they learn the efficacies and processes of learning design which work within their own contexts.

Section two covers "Methods"

Begins with this chapter on "Toward relevant and usable tel research" by Susan Mckenney which argues for better alignment to the needs of learners, especially their learning goals. Also to ensure teachers' perspectives are better understood and applied to learning design as they have the expertise and experience of what works best in their context.

The next chapter is on "Introducing the collaborative e-leanring design method (CoED)" with Thomas Ryberg, Lilian Buus, Tom Ryberg, Marianne Georgsen Jacob Davidsen. The authors detail a collaborative learning design process which was an outcome of 'the Learn@work' project. 

 The third chapter "Double loop design" by Steven Warburton and Yishay Mor details the philosophies and processes which underpin this form of learning design. It is important to not only draw on experience but to also setup conditions which foster continued reflective design.

Then a chapter on "Towards a principled approach to evaluating learning design tools" by Elizabeth Masterman. Here digital tools that support learning design are evaluated. The chapter argues for the importance of this stage, as tools direct the trajectory and application of learning design.

The fifth chapter in this section "Why has LMS learning design not let to the advances which were hoped for?"  By Timothy Goddard, David Griffiths and Wang Mi takes on a critical view of how LMS's direct the ways learning is developed / designed. The chapter calls for care in the selection of LMSs as the effect of the LMS structure is not often taken into account when learning is designed.

The last chapter in this section "A critical review of LMS learning design with Daniel Burgos, follows on from the previous chapter.  This chapter has a focus on adaptive learning processes and through a case study of 4 scenarios, identifies the constraints placed by the LMS on the learning design for effective adaptive learning.

 The third section, focuses on "Tools". The following chapters detail various examples, many developed specifically for contexts across various educational sectors. The chapters are on:

Openglm by Mechael Dernti; Reflections on developing a tool for creating visual representations of learning design with Andrew Brasher and Simon Cross; The e-design template by Helen Walmsley;Ldshake and the ‘Bilogia en context’ teacher community across high schools with Davian Hernāndez-Leo, Pau Moreno, Mar Carriō, Jonathan Chacōn, Josep Biat; and Isis and scenedit with Valērie Emin and Jean-Phillippe Pernin. 

 Overall, a must read by learning designers, in particular the first two sections. The last section provides indication of the ways various contexts influence learning design, leading to the importance of ensuring learning design serves education and not the other way around. However, learning design also has a role in influencing deeper reflection into current ways for developing learning and contributing to shifts in how learning is designed for future educational objectives. 

 

Handbook of Open, Distance and Digital Education - a living book

 Springer is publishing a series of 'handbooks' using a progressive publication model. The Handbook of Open, Distance and Digital Education is published using a 'living edition' model whereby chapters are uploaded, as they complete the peer review and editorial review processes.

All the chapters in this book are open access and currently there are 15 chapters (was 13 last week). Will keep an eye on this book as chapters are uploaded as they provide a current 'state of play' with regards to the macro, meso and micro-level developments in the field. At the moment, the categorisation of the chapters is not complete but will be in place as the number of chapters increase.

Learning /Instructional Design Books - Creative Commons

 Edtech books publihes ebooks wich are completely free. A good service for the educational community,.

As I am doing some intensive reading on 'instructional'/learning design, the book provide a good source of peer-reviewed material. The chapters in the books are drawn mainly from the American instructional design corpus but serve as good foundations for learning design.

Of note are three books -

- Foundations of learning and instructional design technology, edited by R. E. West. This volume collates a range of important readings. Many published in educational technology, educational psychology, instrustional design journals. There are over 50 chapters covering definitions and history, learning and instruction, design, technology and media, and becoming a learning/instructional design professional. The volume represents good introduction to the field.

- Design for learning - principles, processes and praxi, edited by J.K. McDonald and R.E. West. This volume is the 'how to' design learning resource. There are just over 30 chapters organised into sections on instructional design practice, instructional design knowledge, instructional design processes, destigning instructional activities, and design relationships.

- A practitioner's guide to instructional design in higher education, edited by J. E Stefaniak, S. Conklin, B. Oyarzun and R.M. Reese. This volume has 14 chapters covering a range of contemporary learning design approaches and topics. It is pitched at higher education academics and therefore the chapters are more generic. Topics include quality assurance, learning analytics, accessibility, data informed design etc. Therefore, perhaps not a book for beginner learning designers but one which informs academics as to the range and depth of learning design.

Overall, good coverage of the foundations and essentials informing the processes and challenges of learning design. Worth the effort to work through the over 100 chapters as each has useful information. 

Learning / Instructional design journals

 As I progress through ramping up my scholarship of teaching and learning and with aspects of learning / instructional design, I am putting together a list of key readings.

This site provides a good listing of instructional design journals, including peer reviewed (North American), non-refereed journals and magazines, and international journals. The list makes a good starting point along with lists archived on the folowing : Penn State library; University of Cincinatti. 

Learning design or design for learning is a term used in Europe and Australasia. Some journals of note to follow up include: Designs for learning - a nordic based journal (has an article processing charge of 300 euro; Journal of Learning Design - an Australian journal which ceased publication in 2017 :( ; International Journal of Designs for Learning - which is affiliated to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology 

So lots to catch up on!