Curriculum digital transformation through learning design: the design, develop, implement methodology

Implementing design thinking and collaborative approaches to Learning Design (LD), and utilising the latest technology-enhanced learning approaches has the potential to improve the quality of teaching throughout the higher education sector. Even though in a decade of published work, the meaning of LD is associated with a few hundred unique concepts, there seems to exist a general agreement in this field of research and educational technology practice that LD is primarily about generating design ideas, capturing, sharing and eventually reusing them. What is missing is a set of Learning Design Methodologies, which can assist with some of the most challenging issues of LD, such as collaboration, sharing and reusability of the designs. This paper builds the case for the development of such methodologies using an example from an Australian University, where a collaborative learning design methodology for program-level curriculum development was established. The methodology is founded on such principles of collaborative professional learning and design thinking (Hokanson, & Gibbons, 2014). The methodology was piloted by four faculties and eight academic program teams. Technology integration was the focus of learning design. Participants in the methodology were interviewed about their experiences using focus groups. The case study presented here is still work in progress, but it illustrates the results of this initiative to date with an emphasis on promoting the need for more collaborative methodologies for learning design.