Abstract:

The covid pandemic highlighted several issues we should carefully consider as higher education teachers and instructional designers. First, we need to overcome the idea that the teacher’s main responsibility is to act as “sage on the stage”: he should instead focus on supporting the student in achieving the Intended Learning Outcomes applying active learning methodologies. Second, the pandemic highlighted the need and priority of the peer relationship at any level of the learning experience: it has to be fostered in any educational scenario to create an effective and meaningful experience. Third, there is a strong need to design all the dimensions of the learning experience - in presence and online, synchronous and asynchronous, individual and collaborative activities - in a systemic and sustainable perspective. The “Smart Learning Design(25)” or SLD25 instructional design approach has been developed at METID - Politecnico di Milano to manage the complexity of the present context and to support an instructional design that addresses the above issues. “Smart learning” because it goes beyond the distinctions between “presence” and “online”, “physical” and “digital”: it focuses on instructional design as an active and participatory experience finalized to support the achievement of the intended learning outcomes. Furthermore, it supports the effective design of the teaching and learning activities mix, taking into account all the didactical activities useful to support durable learning.

The number "25" refers to the hours required in terms of "student engagement" to obtain an ECTS (European Credit Transfers System): the underlying message for all the educational contexts is the importance of taking the entire process into account.

The SLD25 model allows to deconstruct the complexity of the learning process into its constituent elements, the learning events, and then to reconnect them in a systematic way, in order to design a coherent learning and teaching interaction, which has to be strictly tailored to the context.

Basing on Diane Laurillard's Learning Types (2012), Clive Young and Nataša Perović (2014) referred to learning moments seen from the perspective of the student: however, their work is characterized by a greater focus on what happens in the classroom while the SLD25 supports the design of the complex experience which happens in between several learning events acted by the students in presence, online synchronously and asynchronously, or in an autonomous way.

In SLD25 model, the "learning events” constitute recognizable units recurring in time and space. They can be traced back to events related to the acquisition of knowledge (low interactivity Content collection, high Interactivity content collection), to the application and manipulation of knowledge (Content Elaboration, Discussion, Application and practical experience, Research and production), and to the consolidation of knowledge (Retrieval, Reflection and Metacognition).

Instructional designers and teachers can visualize these same events on a “course frame” that reports, in addition to time, the dimensions in which they occur (in-presence/extended, online synchronous/online asynchronous, autonomous activities): in this way they are aware about the whole time commitment required by students to reach the Intended Learning Outcomes and about the relationships among the different activities involved in the student's global learning experience.

Keywords:

Blended learning, smart learning, instructional design, learning and teaching methodologies.