ABC to VLE: beyond curriculum design Erasmus Project

Project Title

ABC to VLE: beyond curriculum design

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

The rapid move to online learning as a response to the Covid crisis in early 2020 underlined both the importance of learning design and the challenge of engaging mainstream teachers in this process. Traditional course redesign methods, while effective, demand too much time and support to be truly scalable. Well before Covid, this contradiction frustrated educational ambition at all policy levels. Recognising the need for a radical rethink, the digital education team at University College London (UCL) developed a high-energy hands-on learning design workshop locally called ABC Learning Design (ABC LD), with a focus on blended (ICT-rich) learning. The key to this approach was pace, engagement and collaboration. In just 90 minutes, using a ‘rapid prototyping’ format, teaching teams work together to create a visual ‘storyboard’ outlining the type and sequence of learning activities (both online and offline) required to meet the course’s learning outcomes. ICTs, assessment methods, cross-program themes and institutional policies can all be integrated into the process. The Erasmus + ABC to VLE project aimed to provide guidance and templates to enable educational institutions across Europe and further afield to localise the method and link to the institutional virtual learning environment (VLE), or Learning Management System (LMS).

The thirteen partner institutions involved in the ABC to VLE project were chosen to represent a broad range of contexts, including ten countries (UK, DK, BE, RO, HR, FR, FI, IT, IE, EE), ten languages (EN, NL, IT, HR, FI, RO, ET, DA, FR, SV) and a variety of institutional educational technologies (Moodle, Canvas, Fronter, eDidaktikum, Blackboard). Some had used ABC before and others were completely new to the approach. This ensured the project was able to provide outputs relevant to a range of European universities, and beyond.

The primary outcome was the co-development and release of a learning design and staff development online/downloadable ‘Toolkit’ including a resource ‘pack’, and seven guides for localising, training and cascading the ABC LD method within local communities. The pack was validated in three ways, firstly by co-development by the project team, secondly by case studies by the project partners in their own educational contexts, tracking the intervention on the participant experience and thirdly by a releasing version of the Toolkit in early 2019. This encouraged the establishment of a a transnational community of practitioners, many from beyond the original project group. The inclusion of these multiple perspectives has enabled the resources to be adapted across varied educational contexts and has already ensured widespread impact. The project was able to respond to Covid by adding a section on online ABC for the 2020 version of the Toolkit.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 269669,99 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON & Country: UK

Project Partners

• KATHOLIEKE HOGESCHOOL VIVES ZUID
• UNIVERSITATEA POLITEHNICA TIMISOARA
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO
• DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY
• KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
• TALLINN UNIVERSITY
• SORBONNE UNIVERSITE