I know there has been quite a bit of exploratory work in the area of designing open activities, particularly by
Diana Laurillard
My team is currently investigating whether epistemological research methods approaches have specific learning activities or whether more general learning activities are used and the specificity sits with the integrated content and resources. The aim of this is to see if research methods need to have their own online activity sequences or whether we can reuse existing activity sequences. For example a common activity sequence for online research methods is:
- read article/overview etc.
- answer questions on the article/overview etc.
- share answers or reflect on what you have learnt
Now this activity sequence is very common in other subjects even though I still think it is quite a stretch for academics to acknowledge the generic nature of some of the learning and teaching they do. The only thing that differentiates the activity or defines it according to its discipline and level, is the embedded content and resources e.g. the article and questions. With respect to our research methods challenge we may need to dig further e.g. are probing questions structured in a particular way, are specific areas covered, what about activities for quantitative stuff e.g. statistics. Watch this space.
