Forum Teaching with LAMS - experiences: What is greatness sequence

Hi James and everyone,

I’ve adopted the What is Greatness sequence as a test case for the pedagogical planning model we’ve developed. I chose this one as it’s become a sort of de facto benchmark for comparing learning design approaches and applications. I have a few queries about the sequence, its documentation and actual runs that LAMS users may have done. I know the sequence goes right back to 2003 originally, but do you happen to recall if the version currently available for download was produced at the same time as the accompanying document, Dalziel.Lams.doc? The sequence was uploaded to the community site on 29 Sept 2005, and this is the creation date given in the document properties, which however may just indicate the uploading date as well.

The main reason I ask is that there’s a difference between the steps described in the document and the actual sequence, which may well be due to the evolution of LAMS. In the doc, steps 6 and 7 are as follows:

• Step 6: Small group discussion board - each small group is given its own private (asynchronous) discussion board, which is structured to support directed exploration of “greatness”, together with links to relevant content (see step 7 below).
• Step 7: Review content - while in the discussion area, each group is given content about greatness to consider. The content may be delivered via URL links, teacher uploaded websites or individual files. Steps 6 and 7 would take place together over an extended period (eg, a week)

• Review the website about Albert Einstein as an example of a great person, then search the web to find a website about a person that you think is great, and then share this with your group,including a comment on why you chose this person.

So the content and student comments are actually assigned to Share Resources, making the role and use of the forum unclear. There’s also a web search and sharing task not mentioned in the steps. It would be interesting to know how this part of the sequence was implemented in actual runs. I also wonder whether anyone replaced the current pairing of a Forum and a Share Resources with a single Resources & Forum, a feature that may not have been available at the time the sequence was originally written.

Posted by Jeffrey Earp