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The course‎ > ‎ Week 5: Prototype 7 - 13 February 2013 Twitter hashtag: #oldsmooc_w5 This week we go from design idea - the sketch - to the first stage of implementation - the prototype. Leonardo did a sketch for moving heavy water pumps, but seems to have never made one. Hundreds of years later, another engineer turns the sketch into a proof-of-concept prototype. Not the final product, but enough to clarify the functionality and basic technical issue for meeting the user requirements (http://www.creative-science.org.uk/leonardo1.html). This week we look at doing the same for learning designs. By treating teaching as a form of 'design science' we acknowledge the iterative nature of the process - the need to build on what others have done and learned, to experiment and test, and then use this to improve the design (Laurillard, 2012). The week's activities include prototyping activities for digital learning of the type that could be done by any teacher, no programming experience necessary. The pedagogical patterns developed in Week 4 are a kind of prototyping for a whole lesson, or sequence of online/offline learning activities that can be built around an existing digital resource of some kind, such as an Open Educational Resource, or interactive program, or wiki. This week we consider how to express the design of the digital resource itself. It is very important for teachers to be able to express their idea for how a digital learning technology should work for the learner. So we look at some simple ways of expressing and testing interactive programs, i.e. ways of prototyping a design. The closer teachers are to the specification of digital learning designs, the more these programs are likely to achieve useful learning goals. The detail of the design must not be left to the programmers! The week will be led by Professor Diana Laurillard who will be joined by Marion Manton as co-facilitator.  The Cloudscape that supports this week can be found at : http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2856  Learning outcome  You should be able to design, construct and test a simple prototype for a learning design Activity 1 (Thursday, 35 mins) Introduction to Prototyping Activity 1.1 Watch the video introduction to the week’s activities (below or at http://youtu.be/2vBb5CxGDuM) (Download the video transcript). The slides for this section are available for download. If you have access to a computer you may prefer to use the downloaded  'OLDSMOOC Week 5.1 2013-part1' slides found right at the bottom of this page in the file list by clicking on the arrow on the right.  When you are ready to work through the slides you need to 'view slideshow' to enable the links to work. Note the slides for this section do not have voice over. Activity 1.2 Skim through the article by Anderson and Shattuck, noting in particular the section on iterative design. OPTIONAL: Look at a US blog on prototyping for learning design at http://info.alleninteractions.com/bid/94339/Prototypes-Are-Essential-to-e-Learning-Design, which summarises the main reasons for doing it as: Even the slightest ambiguities in the beginning will result in serious problems in later iterations – especially the final product. Every designer knows the impact of late changes to a design. Prototypes allow for the involvement of stakeholders early in the design discussion by allowing everyone to see and react - long before the final deliverable. Words can’t adequately describe media-rich interaction.While many feel confident that storyboards are effective at conveying design, it’s just too difficult – and risky – to assume everyone is able to interpret media-rich interactions from written documents.   e-Learning interactivity needs to be witnessed and experienced for effective evaluation. How the interaction will react and respond to learner decisions and choices is the critical part of the design. This must be witnessed in order to effectively evaluate the appropriateness of the interaction.   Working with prototypes can point out deficiencies and reveal unseen opportunities that are not apparent in sketches and specification documents. “Ah-ha!” moments are either wonderful or challenging depending on when they occur in the process. The late ones cause project overruns while early ones can provide inspiration for improved design. Prototypes create early and inexpensive opportunities for “ah-ha!” moments. These are all excellent reasons. 2 and 3 invite the BUTs: But not everyone can interpret a sketchy ppt interaction as the way it will look when properly designed; But you have to do quite extensive prototyping to do an effective evaluation - the ppt version will give you something, but not a fully effective evaluation of the idea. Now work through the 'OLDSMOOC Week 5.1 2013-part1'. Embed gadget Finally look at this section on the use of PowerPoint to produce prototypes that work. (Note to view this section either look at the slides from 'OLDSMOOC Week 5.1 2013-storyboard-ex' using PowerPoint or view the embedded recording of the presentation.) Activity 2 (Friday, 40 mins) Prototyping activities Etc etc