What is the Learning Designer? The Learning Designer is a tool that helps you plan your teaching. It does this by asking you to think about the learning experiences you're planning for your students, so that they meet their learning outcomes. When you log in to the Learning Designer, you'll see two options, a Browser screen and a Designer screen. We're looking at the Designer screen, and I'm working on a learning design for my teaching with undergraduate sociology students. I've given the design a little bit of detail at the beginning. I've given it a name, a topic. I've specified how long it's going to last, and how many students are involved. I've said something about the context, and I've specified the aims for the session, and the learning outcomes. Next thing to do is to start building the detail. So I click on this button, which will add what we call a TLA, or a set of Teaching and Learning Activities. [MUSIC] I need to give my TLA a name, and I need to decide what kinds of learning experiences the students should have. I can choose from six learning types. [MUSIC] Read Watch Listen, Collaborate, Discuss, Investigate, Practice, or Produce. In this case, I want them to read a briefing document. I need to decide how long this might take. I'll say, maybe ten minutes. How many students it's going to involve? Well, they're all going to do it individually, so I'll put one there. Whether or not, I'm going to be present as the teacher. In this case, I don't need to be there while they're reading. So I'm going to click off, so the teacher's not present. And then I'm going to give a description about what they're going to be reading during that time. [MUSIC] Now I need to add another learning type. And this time, I'm going to ask them to discuss in a small group, maybe for another ten minutes. Group size five, again the teacher's not there. [MUSIC] Now I'm going to carry on and add another sequence of TLAs. [MUSIC] And I'm going to start with an investigation activity that's going to last for 45 minutes. I want them to work in groups of five, and again, the teacher's not going to be present. [MUSIC] So I'm going to continue to build my learning design, thinking about the different learning experiences I want my students to have as I go. [MUSIC] So I finished my design. Just going to check a few things. First of all, I seem to have underestimated the learning time that all of these activities are going to take the students. I've gotten an additional 55 minutes, when I break it down into TLAs. So I'm going to adjust that. And I'm also going to look at the pie chart, which has been building as I've added TLAs. And it's going to give me some feedback about the kinds of learning experiences my students are going to have, as they work through these activities. And then finally, I'm going to export the design, so I can work on it again. [MUSIC]