Abstract

Major drivers within UK higher education include the need to embrace e-Learning and to teach skills not content. Within Institutions, subject specialists are not skilled learning technologists and learning technologists lack specific disciplinary expertise. Thus, there is concern, particularly in Arts and Humanities, that e-Learning should be discipline-appropriate and truly fit for purpose. The challenge this presents to achieving successful collaborative learning design is that of bridging the disciplinary and communicative divide. The Humanities practitioners’ perspective was focused on the teaching of critical thinking/evaluation skills rather than the acquisition of knowledge within an e-environment. The learning technologists’ perspective was guided by the Generative Learning Object approach which seeks to elicit underlying pedagogical patterns from disciplinary practitioners through a dialogic process and make those patterns explicitly available inside a software tool. This is carried out through continued consultation and follow-up. Once the design pattern was captured and computationally modelled the reuse potential of the good design practice, as embodied in the accessible pattern, is considerably enhanced. <p> The three distinct outcomes of the collaboration are: i) the model/blueprint for cross-specialisation collaborative design practice, ii) the tools for supporting collaborative design from planning to delivering, and, iii) an example e-learning resource – a deliverable outcome of this collaboration. </p><p> The paper presents an empirical study of design practices, collaboratively developed, for Humanities educational design, which included the disciplinary practitioner as instructional designer and end user. In practice this included negotiating the Humanities-Technology culture clash, maintaining the balance between pedagogical and technological drivers and developing a communicative vocabulary and framework. The session focuses on the latter two aspects, more generically transferable/reusable in disparate contexts. The practical component of the session offers hands on exploration of the tensions raised and surmounted with regard to design approaches, strategies, methodologies and tactics.</p>