A Conversation between Learning Design and Classroom Observations: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Learning Design, as a field of research, provides practitioners with guidelines towards more effective teaching and learning. In parallel, observational methods (manual or automated) have been used in the classroom to reflect on and refine teaching and learning, often in combination with other data sources (such as surveys and interviews). Despite the fact that both Learning Design and classroom observation aim to support teaching and learning practices (respectively a priori or a posteriori), they are not often aligned. To better understand the potential synergies between these two strategies, this paper reports on a systematic literature review based on 24 works that connect learning design and classroom observations. The review analyses the purposes of the studies, the stakeholders involved, the methodological aspects of the studies, and how design and observations are connected. This review reveals the need for computer-interpretable documented designs; the lack of reported systematic approaches and technological support to connect the (multimodal) observations with the corresponding learning designs; and, the predominance of human-mediated observations of the physical space, whose applicability and scalability are limited by the human resources available. The adoption of ICT tools to support the design process would contribute to extracting the context of the observations and the pedagogical framework for the analysis. Moreover, extending the traditional manual observations with Multimodal Learning Analytic techniques, would not only reduce the observation burden but also support the systematic data collection, integration, and analysis, especially in semi-structured and structured studies.

Developing and strengthening learning motivation: Evidence from a project for primary education in Greece

“…A second limitation of the study is that the research design did not include a pre-and post-test control group to draw safer conclusions. In addition teacher's systematic real-time silent observation was not based on a structured instrument that promotes class observation or an organized observational protocols (Eradze et al, 2019;van der Mars et al, 2018).…”

Assessing the Effect of Pedagogical Transition on Classroom Design for Tertiary Education: Perspectives of Teachers and Students

“…Traditional teaching refers to the teacher-centred teaching approach that places a focus on providing students with information in a one-way manner (Table 1). For the design of a traditional classroom, a teacher stand is usually placed in the front and long tables for students face the front stand, which forms an authoritative position which means that teachers can monitor and ensure their students' seats remain stationary and arranged in rows [38]. As pupils take a passive role in absorbing knowledge and information, this setup is discovered to be more ideal for the memorisation of facts and coursework with a theoretical focus.…”

Contextualising Learning Analytics with Classroom Observations: A Case study

“…On the contrary, while reducing expressivity, systematic (structured) observations allow for more efficient analysis and data processing [21]. Therefore, systematic observations are especially suitable to be combined with digital traces, enriching each other to understand learning processes and contexts with the help of multimodal learning analytics [22].…”

“…Automated or human-mediated data brings different semantics and meaning in the datasets. Each level of the taxonomy can be used for different types of research designs [22], i.e. the use of highly structured observations based on predefined coding can contribute confirmatory research and creation of hypothesis space through labelling of learning constructs within MMLA as indicated by other researchers [32].…”