Forum Higher Ed & Training Forum: Learning Design metaphor: Play or Opera?

By: James Dalziel

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I'm currently writing a chapter for a book about Learning Design and Open Education for the Carnegie Foundation and MIT Press. In one part, I explored the "play" metaphor that is proposed in the IMS Learning Design specification, and offer an alternative metaphor of an opera. Due to limited space, I've decided to remove it from the chapter, but thought it might be worth posting here in case others have thoughts on the play metaphor in IMS LD, or wish to comment on my opera alternative:


IMS Learning Design is one of the main reference points for current work in this field. It suggests that the educational process is analogous to a play with a number of acts, and in each act a number of actors play certain roles (in the specification, “role part”) in a certain context (“environment”). Each “act” represents a particular type of educational activity, and the complete play (“unit of learning”) is made up of a particular structuring (“method”) of these acts. The unit of learning can also contain learning objectives that provide context and purpose for the learning activities

Some people find the play analogy helpful. Personally, I find it at the same time too complex and too simplistic, depending on the purpose. When it comes to explaining Learning Design to an audience who are unfamiliar with the concept, I generally find it most helpful to describe a concrete educational activity structure, and then draw out the implications of Learning Design directly from this (rather than through the intermediate analogy of a play).

On the other hand, when implementing Learning Design, especially in software, I would suggest than an opera is a closer analogy than a play. Compared to a play, opera has the added feature of groups who can sing together – sometimes on the same theme, sometimes on different themes (ie, student subgroups in a class considering the same or different topics in parallel). Opera also has an orchestra and a conductor (ie, Learning Design system and educator-facilitator) who follow a score (the Learning Design), but who also add interpretation as they play the score, based on experience.

The analogy breaks down when the educator-facilitator becomes part of the learning activity in an overt way (such as by commenting on a student forum posting), and this is a concept supported by the play analogy, where the educator-facilitator is just one more role in an act. But from the perspective of software development, it can be simpler to see the educator-facilitator and the students as different categories, and then use roles primarily to distinguish different student tasks within a group activity. By considering the educator separately, it is easier to observe that a Learning Design system often acts as the invisible hand of the educator-author by guiding students through the relevant tasks, and the educator-facilitator may focus on individual mentoring and guidance, rather than the wholesale task of co-ordinating the flow of learning activities.

Posted by James Dalziel