TEL-lingit like IT is

I'm guilty of sometimes getting myopic about TEL as consisting of the effective use of VLE systems. Administering, maintaining and extending VLE infrastructure is a vital foundation for TEL practice. It provides the platform for learning activity design (in all its forms), tutoring, and analytics to assist with student success. In all of this it's easy to lose sight of the potential of TEL to, somewhat more adventurously, add to the authenticity of learning. A colleague at the Open University is a keen advocate on supplying students with real data in their learning. It's a value all TEL practitioners will endorse; technology routinely extends into authentic environments, particularly where the gathering or analysis of data is technologically-mediated and so already digitised. A recent catch-up with a different OU colleague showed me something very interesting. A stone's throw away from my current OU desk (though safely protected by at least two walls and my naturally...

The Institute of Educational Technology (IET) at the OU is a core source for innovation and research for higher education. Its work in learning design is particularly noteworthy, and was on my radar well before I started with the OU.   Collaboration via planning activities, based on evidence, are key to the OU model for learning design. An effective design emphasises student activities aligned with overall learning objectives, appropriately paced and varied. The planning events also give a structured opportunity for good practices to be harnessed across new modules. In the latest research article on the subject of learning design at the OU, Toetenel and Rienties demonstrate how a structured approach to learning design decisions results in a richer and less assimilative module for students: http://bit.ly/2bYUOYm . I've long believed in the value of a collaborative approach to what I've come to know as educational design . Learning design professionals, working...