The Learning Element

A Lesson Planning and Curriculum Documentation Tool for Teachers

This project created an innovative technology tool for teachers, designed with the aim to reconfigure traditional curriculum design and instructional roles. The technology developed in this project supports teachers as they design ‘Learning Elements’, or online modules of teaching content, and consists of three closely interconnected online spaces, which users can choose to view separately or juxtapose in side-by-side panes presenting parallel views:

  1. a ‘teacher resource’ space in which lesson planning occurs
  2. a ‘learner resource’ space in which this plan is translated into student-accessible text for independent or semi-independent learning
  3. a ‘learner workbook’ space in which students undertake activities that have been scaffolded in the ‘learner resource’ space

The technology supports multimodal text delivery (text, image, video, audio). The project applies key elements of today’s ‘Web 2.0’ social networking technologies including the potentials for the collaborative design of content amongst teams of teachers, easy dissemination to students, and rapid, responsive formative and summative assessment of student work.

Since the completion of the SBIR funded project, the Learning Element has been integrated into Scholar and renamed the ‘Learning Module’.

This research has been supported by the Small Business and Innovation Research Program (SBIR), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant ED-IES-lO-C-0021 to Common Ground.