Dr Sue Bennett
Faculty of Education
University of Wollongong
Role: Designer, developer and researcher
sue_bennett@uow.edu.au

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The learning design has been applied to a subject offered in the graduate program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong – EDGI931 Interactive Multimedia Design. The subject has been taught and developed by members of the IT teaching team – namely John Hedberg, Barry Harper, Rob Wright, Lori Lockyer and myself. These people have been responsible for the development of many of the resources and the design of some of the collaborative project activities.

The work I have done as part of my doctoral study involved substantial re-development of the subject with the following specific changes:

• Implementation of an overall learning design that takes learners through a sequence of analysis, project and reflective activities.
• Addition of detailed case materials developed by me in conjunction with the key designers from each of the two case projects. (Note that some source materials were provided by individuals participating in the project and remain their intellectual property.)
• The case analysis activities, including the focus questions and the sequence of activities.
• The reflective components, including the individual focus questions and the group case assignment.

The design process was assisted by advice from my supervisors (Barry Harper and John Hedberg), my colleagues (Lori Lockyer and Christine Brown) and the students who participated in the pilot study.

No issues identified.

The following publications describe the learning environment and the associated research work in greater detail. More publications are forthcoming.

Bennett, S. J. (2002). Learning about design in context: An investigation of learners' interpretations and use of real-life cases within a constructivist learning environment created to support authentic design activities. Unpublished doctoral thesis. University of Wollongong.

Bennett, S., Harper, B., & Hedberg, J. (2002). Designing real-life cases to support authentic design activities. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 18(1), 1-12.

(Also published as Bennett, S., Harper, B., & Hedberg, J. (2001). Designing real-life cases to support authentic design activities. In G. Kennedy, M. Keppell, C. McNaught, & T. Petrovic (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (pp. 73-82). Victoria, Australia: University of Melbourne.)

Bennett, S., Harper, B., & Hedberg, J. G. (2001). Designing diverse information sources to support authentic activities within a constructivist learning environment. In J. G. Hedberg (Ed.), Online Learning Environments (pp 1-12). Wollongong, NSW, Australia: University of Wollongong.

Bennett, S., Harper, B., & Hedberg, J. (2001). Learning about multimedia design through real-life cases. In C. Montgomerie, & J. Viteli (Eds.), Proceedings of EDMEDIA 2001 World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (pp. 131-132). Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.

Bennett, S., Harper, B., & Hedberg, J. (2000). Putting design in context: A case-based approach to learning about multimedia design. In R. Sims, M. O’Reilly, & S. Sawkins (Eds.), Learning to Choose: Choosing to Learn (Short Papers and Works in Progress). Lismore, NSW, Australia: Southern Cross University Press.