On 11 July 25, in my capacity as a TM113 module team member, I attended a continuing professional development (CPD) event about something called ICEBERG.
ICEBERG is an abbreviation for Integrated, Collaborative, Engaging, Balanced, Economical, Reflective and Gradual. It is a tool used during learning and curriculum design, and is intended to embody best practice. The session was facilitated by learning designer Paul Astles, who is from the OU unit Learner and Discovery Services (LDS) (I think that is what LDS means).
What follows is a set of notes, which I am sharing with permission. It is hoped they are useful to anyone who is involved in learning design (including my colleagues from TM113 module team). My advance apologies are for anything obvious that I have missed, any mistakes I have included, and how long it has taken to pull together this set of notes. I always endeavour to thoroughly offer citations, but some sentences may have been taken verbatim from a useful presentation that Paul shared during his session.
Considering draft materials
The starting point of the session was also our starting point; our first drafts of our module materials, which are known as a ‘D0’ (or, module materials that we have started to sketch out). To help up think about our D0s, we looked at 3 ICEBERG principles: Integrated, Collaborative, and Engaging. Each principles have a set of ‘corresponding design tips’. Here are the tips that I’ve noted down, which come from Van Ameijde et al. (2018):
- Integrated: A well-integrated curriculum constitutes a coherent whole where all the parts work together in a meaningful and cohesive way. This means that there is constructive alignment between learning outcomes, assessments, activities and support materials which all contribute effectively to helping students to pass the module.
- Collaborative: Meaningful student collaboration and communication helps students in engaging in deep learning and making concepts and ideas their own (e.g., Garrison et al., 2001; Johnson & Johnson, 1999). It also serves as a mechanism for social support where students feel part of an active academic community of learners (see Tinto, 1975) which makes it more likely that they are retained.
- Engaging: An engaging curriculum draws students in and keeps them interested, challenged and enthusiastic about their learning journey. Where the curriculum matches student interests and aligns with their educational and career aspirations, students are more likely to be retained. Using relevant case studies and readings and keeping these up-to-date as well as including a variety of different types of activities contribute to an engaging curriculum.
We were asked to look at a bit of material that was content heavy and were asked a question: how do we relate our draft materials to these points on the framework?
During our discussions, I made a couple of notes. Regarding Integrative, scene setting is important, since it adds concept. Collaborative can be useful, particularly a bit later on in the module when tools are introduced (collaboration is really important skill within software engineering). Also, Engaging can and should directly align with educational and career aspirations.
A key point that I took away from this part of the session was the need to emphasise ‘the people bit’. Also, since TM113 has three key themes, a question I had was ‘how do we integrate them together?’ There are also, of course, other important themes that are important to the module, such as employability, skills development, ethics and sustainability. In some respects, software engineering can be a linking theme, since it is all about people, tools, management of complexity, and communication.
The student learning journey
After a short break, the next part of the session related to the ‘student learning journey’. We again returned to the definitions of Van Ameijde et al. (2018):
- Balanced: Balanced in this context refers to the workload that students face when studying the curriculum and the extent that this workload is well-paced and evenly distributed. Research has pointed out a negative correlation between average weekly workload and student outcomes, including satisfaction and pass rates, making it particularly important that we don’t overload students whilst keeping the workload appropriate for the level of study.
- Economical: Economical refers to the extent to which a module or qualification is efficient in delivering the learning outcomes without providing too much additional material which. There might be a temptation to provide students with an overwhelming array of interesting facts, ideas, theories and concepts in a given subject area.
- Reflective: For students to effectively pass a module and engage in deep learning, it is important that they are able to reflect on their learning and study progress and have the time and space to do so. This includes regular opportunities for students to test their understanding through, for instance, self-assessment questions, formative quizzes and iCMAs. It also includes opportunities for students to reflect on their learning practices and progress, and set goals. Such opportunities for reflection and feedback help keep students engaged with the curriculum and makes retention more likely.
Of these three principles, one of them is causing me a mild amount of worry: the ‘economical’ principal. There is an inherent challenge within pedagogy, which is: to learn some higher level concepts, you may need to learn a lot of lower level concepts. This learning of ‘lots of useful stuff’ can be difficult. There is also an important related question, which is: where do tell students about all these lower level concepts, if we’re being asked to do it in a cognitively economically way? Interesting facts, ideas and theories can be useful.
We didn’t get the chance to have a chat about ‘G’, which is Gradual. Also drawing on Van Ameijde et al. (2018):
- Gradual: In an effective learning journey, students will gradually encounter increasingly complex and challenging concepts, ideas, materials, tasks and skills development. Where knowledge, skills and assessments all occur over a manageable gradient which builds on acquired knowledge, provides timely opportunities to learn and practice study skills and prepares them achieving the defined learning outcomes, it is more likely that students will not be overwhelmed and therefore more likely be retained.
The key point that I’ve taken away from this bit is the importance of practice (relevant ‘student answered questions’ which can be presented in the module materials)
Resources
During this session (and a related session) links to a number of useful resources were shared. These include:
- ICEBERG in Action: Designing for student retention (Learning Design Blog)
- The ICEBERG principles: Quick guide and prompts (PDF)
- ICEBERG health check (docx)
And, of course, the article that was mentioned earlier:
Reflections
During this session, we didn’t have much time to apply the framework to our module materials, since we still had much to figure out. Not only were we still figuring out ICEBERG, we were also still figuring out the nature and form of our module materials.
One question I did have of ICEBERG was: where is the tutor in all this? I think the answer is that the tutor is implicitly embedded within all parts of the framework. Tutors, of course, make module materials come alive. In turn, they can magnify whatever learning design decisions have been made by the module team.
I get the impression that ICEBERG is a tool that specifically applies to individual modules, rather than qualifications – or, in other words, groups of modules. Can ICEBERG be applied to qualifications? Referring to the original article by Van Ameijde et al., the definition of economical ‘refers to the extent to which a course or qualification is efficient in delivering the learning outcomes’ which suggest that it may well have a wider role. An interesting research question could be: ‘how might all the principles of ICEBERG be used to analyse the learning design of qualifications from different faculties?’ In the meantime, I’m going to concentrate on TM113.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Paul for his useful presentation, LDS, and all colleagues who have contributed to the development of ICEBERG. Thanks are also extended to fellow TM113 colleagues who attended the session.