The eLIDA CAMEL Nomadic Model of Collaborative Partnership for a Community of Practice in Design for Learning

Abstract

A nomadic collaborative partnership model for a community of practice (CoP) in Design for Learning (D4L) can facilitate successful innovation and continuing appraisals of effective professional practice, stimulated by a 'critical friend' assigned to the project. This paper reports on e‑learning case studies collected by the UK JISC eLIDA CAMEL Design for Learning project, which implemented and evaluated learning design (LD) tools in higher and further education as part of the 2006‑07 JISC Design for Learning pedagogic e‑learning programme. Project partners carried out user evaluations on innovative tools with a learning design function, collecting D4L case studies and LD sequences in post‑16HE contexts using LAMS and Moodle. The project brought together learning activity sequences from post‑16HE partners into a collaborative e‑learning community of professional practice based on the CAMEL (Collaborative Approaches to the Management of e‑Learning) model, contributing to international D4L developments. This paper briefly provides an overview of key project output contributions to e‑learning innovations, including results from teacher and student evaluations using online surveys. The paper explores intentionality in the development of a community of practice in design for learning, reporting on trials of learning design and social software that bridged some of the tensions between formalised intra‑institutional e‑learning relationships and inter‑institutional project team dynamic D4L practitioner development. Following a brief report of practitioner D4L e‑learning case studies and student feedback, the catalytic role of the 'critical friend' is highlighted and recommended as a key ingredient in the successful development of a nomadic model of communities of practice in the management of professional e‑learning projects. eLIDA CAMEL Partners included the Association of Learning Technology (ALT), JISC infoNet, three universities and five FESixth Form Colleges. Results reported to the UK JISC Experts' Pedagogy Group demonstrated e‑learning innovations by practitioners in D4L case studies, illuminated by the role of the 'critical friend', Professor Mark Stiles of Staffordshire University. The project also benefited from case study evaluations by Dr Liz Masterman of Oxford University Learning Technologies Group and the leading work of ALT and JISC infoNet in the development of the CAMEL model.