Final Report: Lesson Plans

This is the final report of the Lesson Plans activity within the Technical Standards for Digital Education project. The broad aim of the activity was to

1. gather emerging recommended practice regarding the sharing of lesson plans, and
2. develop a demonstrator as example of moving content between platforms.

This final report summarises progress toward meeting that aim. It outlines the activity context & scope, the methodology employed, challenges encountered and outcomes for the project.

Table of Contents

© Copyright 2010 University of Southern Queensland

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Background

Deployment of digital curriculum content to the classroom has illustrated that teachers find it useful to create and share simple "lesson plans" that contextualise the use of content.

Many learning environments provide the ability to create simple collections / sequences / plans for content usage. However, the systems generally do not allow these plans to be shared between different learning environments. This is an interoperability issue hindering sharing of valuable teacher created lesson plans both between jurisdictions and within jurisdictions.

This activity examined current practice in the sharing of lesson plans between platforms and jurisdictions, and examined the current standards in use in the creation of lesson plan content. The activity created a demonstrator to indicate how this sharing may occur.

Methodology

Approach

The activity’s major deliverable is twofold: a closure report identifying schools sector requirements for the sharing of lesson plans, and a demonstrator to show sharing of content from Scootle to Moodle. Development of the report has been iterative. It began as a briefing paper for the activity and was updated based on feedback from a focus group, desktop research and engagement with standards bodies.

The broad activity methodology was to:

• Identify sector requirements through consultation with key stakeholders and focus group.
• Gather requirements for interoperable lesson plans
• Identify formats and standards for transporting lesson plans between learning environments
• Analyse standards on lesson plan creation (Common Cartridge K-12)
• Collect intelligence on emerging standards for lesson plans through participation in IMS Common Cartridge K-12 working group and other relevant standards groups
• Write progress report, capturing key findings (Deliverable 2)
• Develop a demonstrator of standards based transport showing how lesson plans could be shared between Scootle and Moodle learning environments
• Provide input and feedback for standards activities discovery (Common Cartridge), representing Australian requirements and informed by sector consultation
• Communicate findings on migration of lesson plans between Scootle and Moodle
• Write closure report

Focus group

The focus group provided advice on the requirements of the schools sector challenges surrounding the sharing content that may be described as lesson plans. Inclusion of key non-schools sector members provided linkages to related work in other education sectors. As well as providing advice, the focus group was a key mechanism for the Australian school education community to influence the development of global technical standards.

The following individuals participated in the focus group:

Communications

Communication with the focus group was via face-to-face meetings and teleconferences, and an EdNA groups forum and wiki.

Communication to the broader education sector generally was mainly via the Link Affiliates blog.

Challenges

The Lesson Plans activity ran in parallel with a number of other focus groups. Access to (online) learning content experts is limited and a number of focus group participants were also members of other focus groups. In a sense this placed quite a burden on participants with the amount of time they were able to dedicate to this activity. As a result, the Lesson Plans focus group did not enjoy the same level of participation as some of the other groups.

Lesson Plans, while an important source of content for practitioners, do not yet have the same priority for sharing as other forms of 21^st Century curriculum/content. The most likely reason for this is that digital lesson plans are a newer form of content for many practitioners. There appear to be fewer software applications that support the sharing of digital lesson plans from one environment to another. A number of environments provide the ability to sequence activities etc for a lesson, save those sequences and then make them sharable from within the application. LAMS (Learning Activity Management System) is an example of an application that recognises the importance of both activity sequencing and content, and also has a community established for the sharing of such resources.

What this focus group did do however, was to highlight challenges specific to both lesson plans and to challenges facing practitioners more generally with regards to educational content and behaviours/philosophies surrounding them.

Outcomes

Advice to the schools sector

There were two main aims for the Lesson Plans activity. The first was to gather emerging recommended practice regarding the sharing of lesson plans and the second was to develop a demonstrator as an example of moving content between platforms.

As a result of these activities, it was anticipated that we could provide advice back to the sector on the viability and utility of sharing lesson plans.

Focus group discussions

Conversations during meetings of the focus group were the primary avenue for collecting requirements, analysing current practice, identifying challenges and creating a vision for improved interoperability of lesson plans.

Definitions

Initial discussions focussed on defining what lesson plans actually are. The focus group members had diverse backgrounds and experience, and different opinions on what lesson plans actually are and whether or not there is value to be obtained from sharing them.

While lesson plans may have a formal definition (for example, IMS Learning Design), there are many less formalised ideas on what a lesson plan may be. Consider the following example put forward by a member of the focus group:

‘..for some teachers an image may serve very well as a lesson plan. They can be provided with an image and very easily construct a lesson around that image. They are able to talk about the image, create activities from it, tailor activities to meet special needs where required, identify and collect assessment and other analytical data and so on. Other teachers work from a much more prescriptive framework and will require a plan to be laid out in considerably more detail.’

Focus group members also engaged in discussions on pedagogy and highlighted the impact that different pedagogies had on lesson plans. For example, instructionist or constructivist approaches would have lesson plans that differ quite significantly.

As a generalisation, there are a number of components that may be used to construct a lesson plan. Wikipedia, while not an authoritative source, did at least provide a good starting point from which to build discussions on in the focus groups. Lesson plans may contain some or all of the following:

• Title of the lesson
• Time required to complete the lesson
• List of required materials
• List of objectives, which may be behavioural objectives (what the student can do at lesson completion) or knowledge objectives (what the student knows at lesson completion)
• The set (or lead-in, or bridge-in) that focuses students on the lesson's skills or concepts - these include showing pictures or models, asking leading questions, or reviewing previous lessons
• An instructional component that describes the sequence of events that make up the lesson, including the teacher's instructional input and guided practice the students use to try new skills or work with new ideas
• Independent practice that allows students to extend skills or knowledge on their own
• A summary, where the teacher wraps up the discussion and answers questions
• An evaluation component, a test for mastery of the instructed skills or concepts - such as a set of questions to answer or a set of instructions to follow
• Analysis component the teacher uses to reflect on the lesson itself - such as what worked, what needs improving
• A continuity component reviews and reflects on content from the previous lesson.

It is apparent that if the concept of a lesson plan is something that is worth sharing on a large scale and such sharing is to be done electronically, then any standard that is used to support such interoperability will need to be inherently flexible. From our discussions, the level of granularity required to support different teachers needs is going to be important. Some require a great deal of information while others do not.

There are a number of components that may or may not be used to create lesson plans. Any standard will need to cater for the inclusion or exclusion of different components yet still be able to satisfy a definition of, and interoperability of a lesson plan.

Discussions on what a lesson plan actually is and what needs to be included to satisfactorily describe one, are not new challenges to learning content. As Learning Content Management Systems evolved, there has been considerable debate on what ‘learning objects’ actually are. What is important is that we learn from these earlier efforts to develop standards that support interoperability of different types of learning content and apply that knowledge in emerging areas. To support lesson plans interoperability (if that is deemed to be desirable), we need easy to understand, easy to implement, and very easy to use standards. Ideally, the standards will not even be noticed by the end-user.

Sharing

The other major challenge identified by the focus group was that of sharing. Sharing is seen to be a very important concept and one that needs to be encouraged however it faces a number of challenges including, but not limited to:

• What types of content will provide benefit through sharing (ie is it worth sharing lesson plans - are the benefits as great as those derived from other types of content)?
• Willingness to share. Sharing and openness is greater (as a generalisation) among specific demographics.
• Barriers to sharing:
  • Is my content worth sharing?
  • Practitioners afraid of how their content may be perceived.
  • I don’t want to be seen as claiming certain ideas/concepts as my own as much of what I have learned is from colleagues and I don’t want to be seen as stealing their ideas.
  • Not knowing how to share.
• Some of our software systems don’t really encourage sharing (eg default option is not to share).
• Licensing - what type of licensing is appropriate?
• How do I choose a licence?
• Third-party content/copyright infringement etc.
• Findability. How do you make lesson plans discoverable?
• Quality. What sort of quality control should there be on sharable lesson plans, if any.

The challenges for the sharing of lesson plans are not unique and generally apply to the sharing of any educational content. Sharing is a major challenge and needs to be looked at in more detail than what was appropriate for the scope of this work.

Discussions in the teleconferences and particularly at the face to face meeting revealed sharing to be a major concern for practitioners and jurisdictions. Since this is a broader issue than just lesson plans, or indeed other forms of content and services examined by the focus groups, it was thought that commissioning an investigation into sharing would potentially yield many benefits. This could be done in the context of teacher professional development, developing best practice in a digital (21^st Century) education environment.

Demonstrators

The lesson plans focus group saw two separate pilot projects investigate the sharing of lesson plans. Both projects integrated Scootle and Moodle. Scootle is a national service that provides access to a wide range of digital curriculum resources from The Le@rning Federation. In addition to providing learning objects, Scootle provides teachers with the ability to creating ‘learning paths’. These learning paths are sequences that can broadly be described as lesson plans. They contain some of the components that you may expect to find in a lesson plan. Teachers can make these learning paths sharable however at the time of the focus group’s meetings, sharing was not the default behaviour of Scootle. In this instance, this default behaiviour was a deliberate design choice in order to fit more comfortably with the way the majority of practitioners feel - sharing is no doubt increasing at a rapid rate across the Web among many Web users however many of our teaching cohort do not yet have such an open approach to the creation and sharing of content, thoughts etc.

Moodle is a very well known and well-adopted open source learning management system (LMS). More correctly, it is a course management system. Many schools in Australia use Moodle as an LMS.

One demonstrator project was carried out by The Curriculum Corporation (now Education Services Australia) and the other was carried out by DECS SA.

Both projects investigated and implemented taking a learning path from Scootle and importing it into Moodle.

Both projects settled on developing their own ‘proprietary’ approach to the integration (ie no specific standard was seriously investigated to support interoperability of lesson plans). Timing, and ease of implementation (given tight timelines) were strong barriers to considering any standards. These were relatively simple integrations and there was no scope for further interoperability beyond the immediate scope of the projects.

Both projects exported the learning path as ‘XML-like’ documents. There was some discussion on whether it would be appropriate to define a ‘micro-format’ that could be used by others to create a simple approach to the interoperability of lesson plans. Further (broader collaboration with vendors, international groups etc) would determine the value in developing a lightweight approach to lesson plans (eg microformats) or in fact, the applications of standards such as the IMS Common Cartridge specification.

There was some discussion on whether the IMS Common Cartridge could be used to support a more formalised approach to interoperability for lesson plans. The IMS Common Cartridge K12/Schools enhancements group recognises the need to support many different types of digital learning content and the need to be very flexible. Lesson plans are recognised as an important emerging area however the current specification does not explicitly support lesson plans. There are a number of groups prototyping and testing the development of CC profiles that will support lesson plans. This work should be monitored and if the opportunity is available, it would be well worth joining a working group and contributing to the development of this area.

In the context of the demonstrator projects however, there was no scope for interoperability of lesson plans beyond that to be demonstrated in the projects. This diminishes the need to identify or define a more robust approach. Demonstrators have very limited budgets which impacts decision making - the most expedient solution is often selected over one that may have better long-term or broader benefits.

This does however say something about standards. To gain broad support they need to be as simple as possible to understand and to implement.

Both projects achieved their goals of sharing ‘lesson plan’ content between Scootle and Moodle. The DECS SA project has moved beyond a demonstrator project and has now been implemented across many schools in SA in their Moodle platform.

Contribution to standards development

The relatively short development cycles, limited budgets, and support for usage beyond the immediate scope of the projects combined to inhibit serious consideration of implementation of standards-based solutions to support the interoperability of lesson plans.

Among the focus group there is widespread agreement on the benefits of sharing learning content however there are a number of challenges to be met to support such widespread behaviour. Interoperability of the different types of content (including lesson plans) is just one of those challenges.

Digital lesson plans lag behind other forms of (digital) learning content and the imperative to share them is not as critical at this stage as other content types. As has been suggested, lesson plans are realistically a newer form of digital content than other digital education resources and both practitioners and vendors may to an extent, have lagged in recognising the potential that they offer. Organisations such is the IMS GLC however are recognising this potential and working with vendors and members to address the situation. The K12/Schools enhancements group for IMS Common Cartridge in particular has recognised this need and connections with this group should be established.

The demonstrators illustrate that rapid, or wide adoption at least of standards will in part be based on the ease in which they can be implemented. Developers working on demonstrator projects in particular will generally pursue the easiest solution available to them, perhaps without too much regard for future or broader benefits.

The demonstrators identified micro-formats as a potential for a level of interoperability with lesson plans.

The IMS Common Cartridge specification was identified as a potential standards-based approach should interoperability of lesson plans become more important.

The focus group more generally agreed on the need for a better definition of lesson plans, how they are used and how they are described, as being an important contribution towards supporting interoperability of them. A logical starting point for this work would be to connect formally with the IMS Common Cartridge working group. There is an active community working on the challenges that specifically face the K-12 sector and are working on a number of areas, one of which is lesson plans. Working with this community would provide access to experts in the area and others who face the same challenges. It would also offer an opportunity to contribute to the formation of the new standard or profiles of it, enabling our requirements to be met.

Any standard supporting lesson plans needs to be inherently flexible and must support lesson plans of varying degrees of granularity and composition.

A follow up process would be to test the application of the IMS Common Cartridge Specification against the requirements for supporting interoperability of lesson plans.

Recommendations

The work of the focus group has led to the following recommendations:

• R1: The Lesson Plans focus group members have expertise that is also in demand from other focus groups. Access to these experts is limited. If these focus groups are to continue, the work of the Lesson Plans focus group should either be conducted consecutively or combined into another group such as the 21st Century Curriculum group. Focus group members did not have enough time to allow sufficient participation in multiple parallel focus groups.
• R2: Digital Lesson Plans are an emerging area of importance. It is recommended to use the IMS membership to connect with and participate in the IMS Common Cartridge K12 working group. This group is investigating how the specification can evolve to support multiple, dynamic forms of content such as lesson plans and the specific needs of the K12/Schools sector.
• R3: It is recommended to conduct further work on exploring the benefits of and challenges to sharing. This is an increasingly important area for education and is not unique to lesson plans - it touches on all forms of digital and non-digital content. This work may be carried out in the context of teacher professional development.
• R4: It is recommended to continue the work of demonstrators and pilot projects. The brief of these projects needs to emphasise standards and interoperability. It is through this that we can develop robust, extensible and interoperable tools and services.

Conclusions

The focus group all agreed on the value of lesson plans however given the diverse nature of the group, had differing opinions on the value of sharing them. One key reason for this is the varied opinions of what a lesson plan actually is, how it can be described and how it can be shared. Perhaps the reason for this is that lesson plans have not had as much focus on them as other forms of digital learning content. To an extent, digital lesson plans is a ‘newer’, less well-defined area.

The focus group consisted of members who were already members of other focus groups that were running simultaneously and lesson plans probably have a lower priority than other interoperability challenges facing the sector.

It is recommended that, given the high degree of overlap of focus group members, any further lesson plans work is combined with one of the other activity areas such as 21^st Century curriculum.

It is recommended that further work is required on the area of sharing. Challenges related to sharing are common across many different content types and represent very real challenges and issues for the education community. This may be investigated in the context of teacher professional development.

The area of digital lesson plans is an evolving one and one where not all requirements are, if not widely understood, then not widely documented. Further work is required to define this subject area in order that standards such as the IMS Common Cartridge can support them. It is recommended that connection is made with the IMS Common Cartridge K12 working group. Participation in this group will result in access to experts and also input into the evolving specification.

Demonstrator projects offer significant benefits to the community. To improve upon this further, implications beyond the immediate brief of the projects need to be considered. If this is possible, then the use of standards within demonstrator projects will be given extra weight and more robust, extensible, interoperable solutions developed.

The Technical Standards for Digital Education project is funded by the Australian Government's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).