[DG: Teaching & Learning] rethinking/simplifying learning activities

[janice.smith]

Hi Bruce

You make a good point about the user-friendliness of current teaching and learning software. Best wishes to you in working toward a truly student-centered learning environment!

Janice

Janice A. Smith, Ph.D.
Three Canoes LLC
1204 Laurel Avenue
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55104, USA
651-642-9069, 207-841-6262 (cell)
janice.smith at threecanoes.com
http://threecanoes.com



---- On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:57:14 -0500 Bruce D'Arcus<bdarcus at gmail.com> wrote ---- 


Hi Janice, 
 
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 3:29 PM, janice.smith 
<janice.smith at threecanoes.com> wrote: 
> Hello Bruce 
> 
> In reference to your discussion on simplifying teaching and learning 
> activities, I suggest that you take a look at the work done by Jacques 
> Raynauld and his team at Montreal MATI on Open Syllabus. His presentation at 
> the Sakai 2011 Conference can be found at 
> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CONF2011/2011-06-14+Open+Syllabus+-+Building+a+coherent+learning+environment+in+Sakai+2x 
 
Thanks. I've chatted with Jacques (the excellent manifesto on syllabi 
for OAE), but hadn't seen that. 
 
> Open Syllabus organizes the tasks of a course around an enhanced, 
> interactive syllabus structure, providing a guided, virtual dashboard for 
> all class resources, activities and products. 
 
This is indeed broadly similar to what I'm suggesting. But to be 
really blunt, organizing a UI around abstract terms like "context," 
"structure" and "resource" is not user-friendly. 
 
Users don't interact with "resources": they read books, they watch 
videos, they listen to music, etc. 
 
That kind of thing. 
 
I want a concrete, user-focused, activity UI. 
 
So I'm imaging a UI and a model with just two things: tasks and topics 
(a named list of tasks), and that components of the task model (e.g. 
the verbs and the objects associated with a task) would be extensible. 
 
Bruce 

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