What is the aim of the CRAM project?
Can we improve quality without increasing the per-student workload for academic staff, for higher student numbers?
Who to Contact
Acknolwedgements
What is the Institute of Education?

What is the aim of this project?

As we make the transition from conventional teaching models to running a programme, module or short course wholly online, or in blended mode (a mix of the two) it is important to consider the extent to which this process is beneficial to both students and staff. If it improves the learning experience but at the cost of increased staff workload, it will be unsustainable; if it improves workload but diminishes the quality of the learning experience, it will be unacceptable. The CRAM tool has been designed to help teachers think about the decisions we make when developing new teaching and learning activities and the impact of taking teaching and learning online so that we develop both quality and scalability in a meaningful way.

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Can we improve quality without increasing the per-student workload for academic staff, for higher student numbers?

The Course Resource Appraisal Modellier is an online modelling tool that enables a teacher or a course team to model and test their plan for a course.It elicits the main teaching-learning design ideas and parameters, and summarises the implications of these in terms of the resulting learning benefits and teaching costs. Where the result looks non-viable, the team can experiment with changing any of the parameters and so work out a more effective and sustainable course design.

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Who to Contact

The CRAM tool is part of the Learning Designer project, which is developing learning design tools to support teachers’ collaborative innovation (Building Community Knowledge). The CRAM tool is still in development, so we would very much appreciate your feedback, comments and suggestions for further development. Please contact Diana Laurillard (d.laurillard@ioe.ac.uk).

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements: The underlying model of the CRAM tool was developed as part of the LDSE project (RES-139-25-0406 Technology enhanced Learning) funded by ESRC/EPSRC. The current development as a stand–alone tool is funded through the Higher Education Innovation Fund at the Institute of Education. The tool is freely available and is open source, under version 2.0 of the Apache License, from GitHub.

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What is the Institute of Education?

The Institute of Education, University College London (UCL/IOE) is one of the world’s leading schools for education and social sciences and tops the league table for education research, according to the latest official audit of UK universities and, as identified in its Strategic Plan, is committed to working in partnership with FE and skills providers and stakeholders to address the many challenges experienced by the sector. The IOE undertakes around a quarter of the education research carried out in UK universities and is also the second highest recipient of social science research funding among higher education institutions. In any one year, staff at the IOE are engaged in over 250 research projects funded by research councils, charities, government departments and international agencies.