What you will find on this page

This page gives you a summary of the ABC learning design method. It provides a summary of the six learning types. Further down on the page you will find a link to a page for how to use KI's Trello template for planning your course using the ABC learning types activities. At the bottom of the page there is a link to the course map that you can use to document your learning outcomes, assessment activities and learning activities in your course. You also have images showing you each learning type with suggestions for Canvas equivalents of activities you have previously done face-to-face in the classroom.

Use this page as a way of helping yourself to plan moving parts of your teaching online and making it more blended in character. This will help you to see your course from the student perspective and help you to keep students engaged and activated through the variety of learning activities on offer.

Using the ABC learning design method to storyboard learning activities

The ABC Learning Design method first gets you thinking the activities in your course. By looking at learning activities using the categories from the ABC model you can find ways of moving from the activity in the classroom to selecting an appropriate activity in the online setting. This helps you to plan for your blend! The ABC model divides learning activities into six colour-coded categories:

Acquisition: Learning through acquisition is what learners are doing when they are listening to a lecture or podcast, reading from books or websites, and watching demos or videos.
Inquiry: Learning through inquiry (investigation) guides the learner to explore, compare and critique the texts, documents and resources that reflect the concepts and ideas being taught.
Collaboration: Learning through collaboration embraces mainly discussion, practice, and production. Building on investigations and acquisition is about taking part in the process of knowledge building itself.
Discussion: Learning through discussion requires the learner to articulate their ideas and questions, and to challenge and respond to the ideas and questions from the teacher, and/or from their peers.
Practice: Learning through practice enables the learner to adapt their actions to the task goal, and use the feedback to improve their next action. Mostly done on an individual basis, it is an essential part of the learning process. Feedback may come from self-reflection, from peers, from the teacher, or from the activity itself, if it shows them how to improve the result of their action in relation to the goal.
Production: Learning through production is the way the teacher motivates the learner to consolidate what they have learned by articulating their current conceptual understanding and how they used it in practice.

You can also watch the following film (2:45min) which gives a brief definition of each of the learning types. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Which learning activities do you have for each of the learning types. ie the acquisition of knowledge, collaboration, discussion, exploration, creation and application in your courses at the moment? How can you work with storyboarding for your own teaching?

Tools for storyboarding with the ABC

KIs Trello board with ABC cards which you can copy and adapt for your own course
Use Padlet to give you an overview of the activities in your course

This page gives instructions for how to work with Trello or Padlet if you want to give it a try.

Suggestions for learning activities based on each category

Here are the learning activities for each learning type (please note that the pink card is sometimes called inquiry, sometimes investigation):

Acquisition

investigation

Collaboration

Discussion

Practice

Production

Filling in your course map

Now take a look at your face-to-face course, look at the teaching, learning and feedback activities you get your students to do. Look on the cards above and see how this can be translated onto activities on Canvas. Ask yourselves these questions:

Are there enough activities (remember that you need shorter input and more interactive elements in an online environment)?
Is there enough variety?
Will students get systematic feedback on their progress (through quizzes, discussions, peer reviews, etc.) after each learning activity?
Here is the template for the course map below for you to fill out yourself.

Here's an example of what a course map can look like when you are planning with the ABC model:

ABC course map example in this image