The Birth of Open Source Teaching? October 14, 2005

Learning Designs are sets of learning activities that incorporate content and collaborative tasks into structured, re-usable sequences. LAMS (the Learning Activity Management System ? www.lamsfoundation.org) is an open source Learning Design system that allows educators to easily create and adapt Learning Designs (or ?sequences?) using a drag and drop interface, as well as run sequences with students and monitor their progress. LAMS has been effective in school, higher and further education environments, with positive evaluations from reports by JISC and BECTA. With the recent launch of the LAMS Community (a global website for discussing the use of LAMS and sharing LAMS sequences - www.lamscommunity.org) educators now have a central place to find, use, adapt and share sequences. This presentation will discuss the field of Learning Design, the implementation of the LAMS software and the LAMS Community website (including live demonstrations), and why this may represent the birth of ?open source teaching?.