Robyn. You ask why a sequence? There must be lots of reasons but here is one idea. It would be great if others could suggest further reasons.
Learning is a process. Let’s say you want your students to understand a new concept. They need, for example, to hear some opinions, think about these in relation to what they already know, discuss their views with their classmates, find out some more information from people with different perspectives, present individual work displaying their own individual views, test their developing understandings of the concept against new information, and so on.
At each stage of this process students are given opportunities to deepen what and how they know whatever it is they are learning. When teachers construct a sequence of learning activities they can take into account all the different factors that affect how students learn. A good learning design allows students to build on what they already know, to work collaboratively and individually, and to go through the various processes that ease them towards deeper levels of understanding.
It was possible, of course, before LAMS to have students carry out a sequence of individual learning activities online. But the students were not in the same space at the same time and the movement from one activity to the next was not seamless – and nor could you see in an instant what others thought about a particular point of view. Collaboration and interactivity occurred in a token way but with LAMS there can be real collaboration through sequential activities. I think this is beginning to sound like advertisement-speak so I’ll stop there.
Posted by Donna Gibbs
