Designing for learning within an organisational context

Understanding the reality of how course design occurs is crucial to applying the principles that underpin designing for learning in technology-enabled contexts. Although a myriad of educational rationales and design tools are available, the process of designing for learning within a course setting is a complex process. While the primary aim of designing for learning is to create pedagogically effective courses, now teachers and learning designers are frequently being asked to do something much more ambitious – to design courses that contribute to a radical transformation of the curriculum across an institution. Can design for learning meet this ambitious aim? This chapter reviews how attempts to transform the curriculum have progressed and what we have discovered about how to support practitioners through such design processes. It makes recommendations for how the field of learning design could respond to institutional imperatives for radically redesigned, technology-rich curricula.