Thomas Carey is co-Principal Catalyst for WINCan and Executive-in-Residence in the British Columbia Association of Institutes and Universities and the Monash University Faculty of Arts .
Eleanor Pierre is the president of EJP Communications and has extensive instructional design experience in the higher education and corporate sectors, both in Canada and internationally.
A previous post outlined the rationale for co-creating learning resources for workplace innovation capability, which could be adapted for multiple academic and workplace. A later post described some of our processes in exploring this goal. In this post we outline the resulting Adaptable Learning Design Model and some of the key elements being tested with our current prototype Learning Resources to develop workplace innovation capability in different contexts.
Adapting a Design Model used to integrate online and on-site instruction in higher education
The fundamental ideas in our Adaptable Learning Design Model came from earlier work to provide an efficient way to provide both online and in-class formats for many in-demand course units – while ensuring that the learning outcomes and workload were equivalent and that learning resources created in either format could be easily adapted to the other setting. The model was successfully applied in Canada and adapted for use in other countries (e.g., Hong Kong, Thailand and Australia).
The key elements of this model – Tasks, Topics, Tutorials, Tools and Teams – led to the label of T5 Learning Design:
Tasks were the driver for all student learning activity. Every Task had a “deliverable”, including both short pre-class or online submissions and longer assignments; every deliverable received feedback, e.g., Self-Assessment in response to prepackaged instructor commentary after submission or instructor commentary on the work. Some Tasks also contributed to a grade or milestone achievement. The Tasks for both online a and in-class learning formats were equivalent.
The other elements were all framed as resources for successful Task completion:
Topic resources provided the underlying Knowledge required to carry out the Task
Tutorial resources addressed the Skills needed to carry out the task
Tool resources were used in the actual Task completion (e.g., a simulation Tool could be used to trial different possible solutions)
Team roles provided support in Task completion. For example, an Instructor or Coach could be available to help with the Knowledge or Skills; a Mentor could support the necessary Mindsets for the Task. Fellow learners or Workplace Proctors could also take on specific roles to support Task completion.
In the original application to online and in-class formats for higher education learning environments, the in-class format for Topic exposition and Tutorial walk-through of worked examples was replaced in the online format with online resources. The Team roles associated with an in-class cohort also needed more adaptation if the online class format was to be self-directed rather than cohort-based.
Modular instructional elements for adaptation in workplace and higher ed contexts
For our more recent use of the T5 approach for adaptations in both academic and workplace settings, we assumed that the Tools and Teams resources would be context-dependent, and that the Tasks to drive the learning would be chosen to be relevant and authentic for the specific context.
We focusing on Adaptability as a ‘plug-and-play’ model for the Topics and Tutorial Learning Resources, where adaptations to different contexts would maintain fidelity of implementation for the Learning Design. There is ample evidence from both academic and workplace settings that re-use and adaptation of shared Learning Resources can ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ by adapting away the instructional elements which were key to success in the original context. (One of the other Learning Resources we are building addresses this fidelity of implementation concern directly across workplaces: Innovation Adaptation – “How Will This Work Here?”.
The Adaptable Learning Design Model we have developed has the following elements:
a Project-based Learn-by-Doing setting, in which learners applied what they were learning to an authentic Task context.
In a higher ed setting, the Project would either be from within the Course Unit where the learning is taking place or could be from another academic Course Unit (e.g., if students using the resource were engaged in a work-integrated learning project within our own ‘workplace for learning’).
In a workplace setting, the Project would usually from within the organization in a just-in-time learning mode.
a Learning Resource on the critical Topic Concepts and an accompanying Case-Based Tutorial with illustrative examples and practice exercises.
While the Topic Concepts would remain largely the same across contexts, the Tutorial Cases used for examples and practice need to be easily adapted to a different context.
For example, a Case originally designed for university students in Engineering would be replaced by different illustrative and practice cases when used in a Healthcare context (either workplace or academic).
A generic illustrative Case for university students could also be constructed around our own teaching and learning environment, as a workplace context with which students are already familiar. For example, we are now exploring the use of a case study on Innovation Adaptation within higher education teaching which illustrates the critical aspects of an evidence-based teaching practice which must be preserved in any adaptation to a new context.
To highlight the Tutorial Case-based elements which can be most easily adapted – and the Topic concepts elements which need to be preserved, we are formatting the Learning Resources with facing pages for Topic and Tutorial information (concepts on the left, cases on the right).
image of cover page: The ROI of Innovation Projects
image of a sample topic page
We’re applying this Adaptable Learning Design Model in Learning Resources for three topics, and the results will be described in three future blog posts:
Innovation Adaptation: How Will This Work Here? as mentioned above
Making the ROI Case for an Innovation Project, illustrated here
Learning to Be Surprised: Reflecting on Practice in Workplace Innovation Projects
[This work was supported by a Government of Ontario Skills Catalyst Fund grant to Prof. Andrew Maxwell at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering.]