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across participants (task distribution), how participants are distributed across groups
(group formation) and how tasks and groups are distributed over time (sequencing).
While CSCL scripts can provide a formalism for researching and designing suc-
cessful learning, there is also a need to develop and implement tools that help to
structure and manage learning within the classroom.
Learning Design and Delivery Tools for One-to-One Scenarios
The aims of learning design (LD) are to improve education by involving learners
in structured learning activities. Such activities are sequenced carefully and delib-
erately in a learning work flow to promote effective learning. A successful LD can
be shared, re-designed and re-used (Britain, 2004). IMS LD is a standard published
by the IMS consortium based on the Educational Modelling language (EML) that is
claimed to formally describe the design of teaching and learning for a wide range
of pedagogical approaches (Koper & Tattersall, 2005). IMS LD provides benefits
for e-learning stakeholders that include re-using learning units from one system to
another, and supporting interoperability of courses to the market of e-learning more
appealing (Koper & Tattersall, 2005).
However, IMS LD does not provide sufficient support to model group based, syn-
chronous collaborative learning activities, artefacts, dynamic features, complicated
control flow and varied forms of social interaction (Miao, Hoeksema, Hoppe, &
Harrer, 2005; Niramitranon, Sharples, & Greenhalgh, 2009). It also has difficul-
ties in expressing some aspects of a lesson plan, for instance: a scenario in which
students pass a piece of work from one person to another within a group; how to
provide a randomization mechanism; how to dynamically form groups when a les-
son has already started (van Es & Koper, 2006). IMS LD also poses a difficult task
for teachers in using complex technical specifications and modelling collaborative
characteristics. To address these problems software tools such as Collage have been
developed to help teachers in the process of creating collaborative learning scenarios
by reusing and customizing patterns (Hernández-Leo et al., 2006).
LAMS (Learning Activity Management System) is an activity-based learn-
ing software which has embedded a design tool with its own delivery system.
Teachers use an intuitive visual authoring environment to create learning activities in
sequences by using tools provided in LAMS itself (e.g. vote, question and answer,
forum). The output of the LD is executed and run under its own delivery system
(Dalziel, 2003). Although LAMS does not implement IMS LD (Dalziel, 2006), it
is widely used in education due to the ease of use in practice (Britain, 2004) and
LAMS users have their own online community in an attempt to share design lessons
and best practices (Laurillard, Oliver, Wasson, & Hoppe, 2009). However, LAMS
has some issues, for example: the possible learning scenarios in LAMS are con-
strained by the available tools provided by LAMS itself; the mechanism of activity
sequencing does not cover the fine detail of interaction and workflow, for example,
Group 1 completes task A and passes to Group 2, then Group 2 completes the task
and sends it back to the whole class.
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