Cultivating Learning Design Thinking With e-Portfolios in a Masters Course.

There is strong interest for qualifications in educational technology, a field that investigates how new technologies can be effectively matched to addressing learning needs within educational contexts. Students registering for the University of Cape Town Masters' level course on 'Online Learning Design' come from diverse backgrounds and are employed in schools, universities and in business. Typically their roles in designing educational technology interventions represent a significant yet comparatively small part of their jobs. Over the last four years we have developed and adopted this course to the needs of people who, for the most part, are keen to apply learning design skills in their work contexts. The course thus aims to develop learning design thinking and provide practice with a broad range of pedagogic strategies, theories and technology tools. In keeping with design thinking, we used electronic portfolio assessment rather than formal essays, the conventional form of assessment in Masters' level courses. We draw upon the principles of design-based research (The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003) and Engeström's Activity Theory (2001) in describing the evolving learning context and our design choices. Using data from the 58 students who have attended the course over the past 4 years, we focus on key tensions that have emerged in the use of electronic portfolios to capture the students' learning design thinking as they develop online learning activities and we endeavour to provide feedback on complex design issues. We distinguish between four student groups, which are permutations of students with and without formal educational and technology backgrounds. Students most closely associated with each of these groups tend to respond differently to the curriculum and learning activities. These varying responses have been instructive in identifying aspects of the course requiring redesign and developing a theoretical account of how students best develop 'learning design thinking'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]