One great thing I took away from the chapter was Littlejohn et. al levels of LO granularity, which are, in increasing levels of complexity:
- digital assets - single file
- information objects - aggregation of digital assets
- learning activities - involves interations with information
- learning design - structured sequences of information and activities
The chapter goes on to define learning activities. Learning activities are defined using a taxonomy of its components, which are:
- The context - when does the activity occur? What is the learning outcome? What type of learning outcome?
- The pedagogy - associative, cognitive or situative?
- The tasks - types of tasks, interaction, resources. Tasks can be classified as:
- assimilative tasks
- information handling
The chapter also looks at other approaches to creating learning activities including; narratives and case studies, lesson plans, templates and wizards, toolkits, models and patterns. Looking at these approaches the question is are we abstracting too much information away from the pedagogical expert that is the course creator? Although these models allow for courses to be created more efficiently using tried and tested learning design we still must make provisions to allow the expert course creator to move away from the prescribed learning designs in these models, perhaps through an "advanced view" of the learning design?
Anyway - great chapter Grainne!