INTRODUCTION
ABC to VLE is a 2 year Erasmus+ funded project that UCL is leading in collaboration with 12 partner institutions from across Europe. The project will develop support structures to help teaching teams to implement their ABC learning designs within the local Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Learning Management System (LMS).
PROJECT OVERVIEW
ABC to VLE: beyond curriculum design 01 Sept 2018 – 31 Aug 2020
The partnership will develop ABC as a downloadable toolkit that can be used globally by any institution in the sector.
Dr Clive Young, Project Lead at UCL explains the origins and purpose of the project at the kick-off meeting in October 2018.
The ABC to VLE partnership supports the transnational development, transfer and implementation of an innovative and engaging approach to learning design, with a focus on the use of digital technologies. ABC to VLE will share, evaluate and enhance practice of teachers in HE. It builds, improves on and extends an already successful rapid-development methodology (ABC) that helps (re)design courses and programmes around the learner experience and the strategic use of ICT.
The primary output will be a downloadable, open-source learning design and staff development ‘pack’ including methods for localisation, cascading and post-design support. The pack will be validated by case studies by the project partners, and more widely by the initiation and engagement of a transnational (as well as national) communities of practitioners who will disseminate locally, but also use and provide feedback on the pack throughout the project.
The cross-institutional, trans-disciplinary perspectives is essential to the project as it will enhance localisation (e.g. language translation and alignment with institution-specific educational priorities), so strengthen its potential to impact on local educational change initiatives and the wider modernisation agenda across Europe.
Project activities
- Schedule local ABC workshop(s) and provide evaluation data to the project partners.
- Tweet photos & provide information to local staff to aid in project dissemination and reporting
- Reviewing local versions of ABC materials so that they are best adapted to culture and educational processes
- Develop and revise local country versions of ABC materials, so that they better align to national educational cultures and drivers
- Publish case studies (using the provided template) about how ABC has been localised and the outcomes for staff
- Run events to disseminate the ABC workshop to external institutions. E.g. a local ABC workshop available to nearby institutions, conference presentation, webinars etc
- Participate in the development of local special interest groups within each partner’s country or region
- Contribute digital content, including blog posts, Twitter posts, photos, videos, webinars (recorded), to aid project dissemination
- Some partners will develop joint paper publication(s)
As Associate Partners, the University of Oxford are also contributing to some project outputs, with a focus on how ABC can be used to support the migration to Canvas Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Along with the University of Amsterdam they will bring an additional perspectives on how the ABC learning design method can be used to support learning design within Canvas.
The majority of other partners use Moodle as their institutional VLE, otherwise known as a Learning Management Systems (LMS). Some partners support multiple VLEs and will be able to share their perspectives on how ABC can be modified to suit these.
Activities
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