Although teachers in higher education have always designed learning experiences, most would not refer to themselves as ‘learning designers’. But while a core aspect of an academic’s role is to design learning experiences for students, the design work that university teachers undertake is poorly understood (Bennett, Agostino & Lockyear, 2017).
Although interest in learning design was growing prior to COVID-19 (Slade, 2018), the complex nature of this design work has been brought increasingly into focus by the challenges of the pandemic (Heggart & Dickson-Deane, 2021). For educators in creative disciplines, designing and delivering online, inclusive, creative education required a radical rethink of existing approaches to teaching (JUICE VOICE Conference Special Issue).
Learning experience design in higher education occurs at the programme level, the module/unit level and at the level of an individual session. The learning design process involves taking an idea for an experience from conception to realisation to enable students to achieve specific learning outcomes. This may involve the use of concepts such as backwards design or constructive alignment (Biggs, 2003), design thinking, or a range of instructional design methodologies and principles (York & Ertmer, 2016).
This special issue of JUICE focuses on the process, principles and practices of learning design in creative education. We are interested in articles informed by, but not limited to, the following topics:
- design methodologies that university teachers follow
- theories and concepts that influence the learning design process
- technologies and tools that support the learning design process
- involving students, technicians and other professionals in learning design
- writing and reviewing learning outcomes in creative disciplines
- designing inclusive and accessible learning and assessment experiences
- evaluating the effectiveness of learning design in creative disciplines
- designing blended and hybrid learning experiences in creative disciplines
Guest Editor
The JUICE team is very pleased to welcome creative educator Glenn Fosbraey as the guest editor for this special issue. Glenn is Head of Department of English, Creative Writing and American Studies, University of Winchester. Please feel free to contact Glenn to discuss your ideas for articles and submissions: glenn.fosbraey@winchester.ac.uk.
Guidance for submissions
JUICE welcomes articles in a range of formats including video, audio, text and images. The key criterion for an article is that it must be critically reflective and be informed by relevant academic literature.
Text articles should be between 2,000 and 4,000 words in length, and video and audio submissions should be up to 15 minutes in duration. Submissions can include a mixture of formats, see this example.
Please include a list of references with your submission in text format. References should be in the Harvard style, please look at any previous JUICE article for examples of our approach to Harvard referencing.
Please submit your article as a Google Doc – here is guidance on how to do this.
Important dates
- 1st July 2022 – Deadline for 400-word abstracts
- 1st August 2022 – Authors notified and invited to write full manuscript
- 1st November 2022 – Deadline for full draft manuscripts
- 1st December 2023 – Deadline for reviewer feedback
- 1st February 2023 – Deadline for final submission of revised articles
References
Bennett, S., Agostinho, S., and Lockyear, L. (2016) The process of designing for learningL understanding university teachers’ design work. Educational Technology Research and Development. 65, pp.125-145.
Heggart, K., and Dickson-Deane, C. (2021) What should learning designers learn? Journal of Computing in Higher Education.
Slade, C. (2018) Professionalisation in academic development: Exploring learning designer roles in a changing higher education sector. Advance HE teaching & learning conference 2018. Teaching in the spotlight: Learning from global communities, Birmingham, UK.
VOICE Conference Special Issue (2021) Journal of Useful Investigations in Creative Education.
York, C. S., & Ertmer, P. A. (2016). Examining instructional design principles applied by experienced designers in practice. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 29(2), 169–192.
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