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(Stephen Downes) So, hello everyone.

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I'd like to state and for the record,


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I love the blue dots.

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(LAUGHTER)

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I've been sitting there
watching the blue dots.

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So, I've been cast in the role of 
the person who finds the problems

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with the topic that we're all praising.

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I do like agile design, I like it a lot.

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And I like the concept of 
agile <i>learning</i> design,

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I like it a lot.

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But, you know, I've been in the field 
of programming for many years.

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I've been in the field of learning design 
for many years.

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I've worked on small projects,
I've worked on big projects,

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I've been the peon 
at the bottom of the pile

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and currently I'm the program leader
responsible for producing outcomes.

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So I've seen it from different angles.

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And there's so many ways it can go wrong,

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especially when we move from the 
fairly static domain of software design

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to the far less static domain
of learning design.

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That's learning design.


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It's the least agile thing 
you'll ever see.

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That's actually a graphic from IMS

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which produced the learning design 
specification.

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That's supposed to be 
pretty open and flexible,

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It's like a play with a director and roles
and all of that.

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But, you know, once you're into the thing,

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there isn't a whole lot of flexibility 
happening

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and it leads to questioning just 
what is it that we're up to

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when we are talking about 
agile learning design?

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Are we talking about 
agile 'learning design'

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or are we talking about 
the design of agile learning?

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Two different things,

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and it seems to me that 
it doesn't make sense

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to give the instructional designers
all that freedom and flexibility

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if we're going to march students
lockstep through

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a predefined kind of process.

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Here's what agile learning design
ought to look like.

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There's a flow.

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This is agile design generally, right?


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And it's an iterative thing,

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and yet people don't talk 
about that so much

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but it's an iterative thing.

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Each iteration is like designing a full
and complete product,

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and then you might spin off 
some side things, some prototype things

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as you need to, but, you know, 
version 1, version 2,

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you're doing the same thing over again.

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No course in the world,
well, maybe not no course,

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but few courses in the world 
are designed that way.

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Courses progress from Lesson 1, 
Lesson 2, Lesson 3, Lesson 4.

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They don't cover all of geometry 
and then all of geometry in more detail

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and all of geometry in more detail.

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It's a different way of thinking
about the process.

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So, one of the major concepts
in agile learning design,

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in agile design generally, it's the Scrum.

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The Scrum is basically a self-organizing
development team.

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It is originally drawn from the idea that

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programmers are the smartest people 
in the world and do not need management.

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No, I'm just kidding, but there is 
the idea here that

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the programmers know how to program, and
they know how to produce the outcomes,

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if they're left to do the job for 
themselves, to organize for themselves.

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And indeed, in the Scrum meeting,
as you are mapping out the task,

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each of the tasks, in the Scrum itself,
selected by the programmer.

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So, they're volunteering to jump in,
to do these things.

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They're taking commitments on themselves,
they're specifying how much time,

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how much effort will be required 
to produce the commitment.

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So, OK: that's good
but this doesn't happen by magic.

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It takes time, and