Learning Management

Learning Management is the capacity to design pedagogic strategies that achieve learning outcomes for students.The learning management concept was developed by Richard Smith of Central Queensland University (Australia) and is derived from architectural design (an artful arrangement of resources for definite ends) and is best rendered as design with intent. Learning management then means an emphasis on ‘the design and implementation of pedagogical strategies that achieve learning outcomes. That is, in the balance between and emphasis on curriculum development and pedagogy, the emphasis is definitely on pedagogical strategies. Underpinning the learning management premise is a new set of knowledge and skills, collectively referred to as a futures orientation and which attempt to prepare the mindsets and skill sets of teaching graduates for conditions of social change that pervade local and global societies in the 2000s. The practitioner of learning management is referred to as a learning manager. Adjunct to the theory and practice of learning management is the Learning Management Design Process (LMDP). The LMDP is a curriculum planning process comprising 8 'learning design based' questions. The process was developed by Professor David Lynch of Central Queensland University in 1998 and is used primarily as a tool to train teachers to teach [3] . These 'eight questions' when answered in sequence focus the teacher to what is important when planning to teach students. The LMDP organises its 8 questions through three sequencial phases: Outcomes, Strategy and Evidence. Each phase represents the bodies of information that its associated questions seeks to purse. THe LMDP represents a rethink of the various curriculum development models that have predominated the planning of teaching and curriculum in the developed world over past decades. The teacher develops their 'teaching plan' by engaging with each phase and its questions and recording ‘findings’ (or answers) in plan form.