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”.

Note to participants: If you have a wireless laptop, please bring it to the session, as Professor Dalziel is intending to try something new for this presentation. LAMS will be running on a laptop, with a small wireless router. This will allow anyone in the audience with a wireless laptop to join in on sequences as they are being created during the presentation. The LKL seminar is the first time this will be attempted. It would be an excellent example of using mobile technologies with LAMS in the kind of innovative way that we may see a lot more of in the future.