Presentation at EC-TEL 2016, Lyon, France. 14/09/16.

1. MOOC design workshop: educational
innovation with empathy and intent
Steven Warburton, University of Surrey, UK
Yishay Mor, PAU Education, Spain
Rikke Toft Nørgård, Aarhus University, Denmark
Pierre-Antoine Ullmo, PAU Education, Spain
ECTEL, Lyon, September 2016
Juicy Salif lemon squeezer (Philippe Starck)

2. Empowering
design capability
Christopher Alexander
Everyone designs
who devises
courses of action
aimed at changing
existing situations
into preferred ones
(Herbert Simon)

3. diffuse
design
expert design
Design processes in the domain of education
are always interdisciplinary
(Manzini, 2015)

4. CC By Mathieu Plourde, 2013 – http://flickr.com/photos/mathplourde/8620174342/
Littlejohn and Milligan (2015) reviewed the design quality of 76 randomly
selected MOOCs.
Headline: organisation good but instructional design quality low.

5. Q. How can we make successful design
decisions?
A. By drawing inspiration from
previous successful designs.

6. • Design knowledge is
predominantly tacit. Experienced
designers identify familiar
problems, and apply tested
methods of solution.
• Design patterns make this
knowledge visible, shareable,
reusable and falsifiable.
Problem Solution
Context

7. Bring them along
Bend don’t break
Induction
Know your audience
Scaffolded MOOC
ECL MOOC LDS
Fishbowl
Provocative question
Chatflow
MOOC Legacy
Crowd bonding
Drumbeat
Large diverse groups
Knowing the story
Herding cats
Adjacent platforms
LEARNING
ORIENTATION
STRUCTURE
COMMUNITY
PARTICIPATION
MOOC Design Pattern Mapping
(Warburton and Mor, 2015)

8. Participatory Pattern
Workshops
Learning Design
Studio
2. Patterns
1. Narrative case study
3. Design challenges & scenarios
5. Evaluation
4. Prototype
Reflecting on past success Designing for the future
Double loop design (Warburton and Mor, 2015)

9. Scaffolding design activity
Personas, Intents, Patterns: design drivers
and prompts

10. Investigate
Prototype
Design
Identify challenge
Evaluate
3
1
Share / critique
Reflect
7
4
5
6
2
Design Patterns
Storyboards
Force maps
A design studio approach - a dynamic, active,,
group process – running from 90 minutes to a
whole day.
Group ‘crit’
After: Mor et al. (2012)

11. Sketch your challenge

12. Personas: if you’re not designing for someone,
you’re designing for no-one
• Personas are a tool for sharing
our understanding of our
expected users, as a starting
point for design.
• In order to fit the needs and
constraints of these people, we
need to have a model of the
actors playing a role in our
innovation.

14. Exploding the design
space: force maps
A graphical representation of
the factors and concerns
that shape the design space:
the material, social and
intentional forces that define
what is possible and what
needs to be addressed to
achieve success.

15. Declaring your intentions

16. Design action:
• Pattern cards are used as design prompts suggested by
the context of the problem space;
• Participants work with those which resonate with the
design challenge (maybe 5-6 cards to begin with) -
referring to the personas, transition matrix, intentions and
force map - reflection in action (Schön, 1991);
• Creating a plan of action / an intervention based on the
chosen design prompts …

17. Design Pattern: Fishbowl
You are running a MOOC and want to include a
seminar style teaching session.
***
But with such large numbers of students it is difficult to
simulate the intimate interaction between teacher and
students that is typical of a classroom setting.
***
Therefore broadcast sessions where selected students
act as proxies for the cohort.
Set up a synchronous online conferencing tool to host
the fishbowl session. Invite the ‘fish’ and advertise the
event to the intended audience.

18. Storyboard! (15 min)
Your
challenge …
Create change
through social
action
P2P
Quiz
Video
The design workspace
Critcal skills

19. Sharing designs – the storyboard
A storyboard is a graphical representation of a
design scenario, communicating the key elements
in the flow of activities.

20. Showcase presentations – the ‘crit’
The teams present their work for feedback and discussion to share,
critique and reflect on the proposed innovations/solutions.
Reflection on action (Schön, 1991)

21. Some observations
• User-centred as opposed to content centric.
• Workshops + toolkit = methodological “tooling up” (Manzini,
2015).
• They facilitate the co-design process and are part of a strategy
to upgrade diffuse design.
• Design patterns add the ‘voice’ of the expert designer.
• Motivation to put ideas into practice cannot be guaranteed.
• To promote a rich design culture, other design initiatives can
be activated to: trigger, investigate, inform, vision and
enhance design conversations.

22. Thank you
Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everyone designs. MIT Press.
Mor, Y., Craft, B. (2012) Learning design: reflections on a snapshot of the
current landscape. Res. Learn. Technol. 20, 85–94
Warburton, S., Mor, Y. (2015). Double loop design: configuring narratives,
patterns and scenarios in the design of technology enhanced learning. In:
Mor, Y., Maina, M., Craft, B. (eds.) The Art and Science of Learning Design.
Sense publishers: Netherlands
Warburton, S., Mor, Y (2015): A set of patterns for the structured design of
MOOCs. Open Learn. J. Open Distance e-Learning 30(3), 1–15 (2015)