The conversational framework, by [[Diana Laurillard]], is a summary of the main theories of teaching and learning. It is a simplified yet [[Unified theory of pedagogy|unified theory of pedagogy]] that is made to be easily applicable to practice. It can aid in mediating the designer's cognition, that is helping them be more thoughtful in choosing a sequence of activities that covers many different learning types. For example, this is done in the [[Learning designer (UCL)|learning designer (a tool by Diana)]] through visualising the proportion of time spent on activity type in a pie chart which is a useful basis for [[Reflection|reflection]]. Unlike other [[Learning design|learning design]] frameworks that model learning from the teacher's point of view, such as [[Orchestration graphs|orchestration graphs]], the conversational framework pushes the teacher to consider the student's point of view - with six nodes, where learner concepts and learner practice is placed at the centre. ## Learning activities on the conversational framework Diana suggests **six** overarching types of learning activities (acquisition, inquiry, discussion, practice, collaboration, production) which map onto nodes (learner concepts, learner practice, peer concepts, peer practice, teacher concepts, learning environment) that act as a representation of the entities involved in a classroom. <iframe src="https://visualisation.tools/conversational-framework/activity-types" style="border:0px none;" width="100%" height="400px" allowfullscreen></iframe> In case the visualisation above fails, I have included a text description below. ### The six activities visualised: text #### 1. Acquisition The student is learning from the teacher, where they are presenting some information. For example, a lecture, video or writing. ![[Pasted image 20250919150805.png]] #### 2. Inquiry The student is outputting things, whether it be questions to a teacher, or searching google (which is a kind of representation of a teacher), which then returns information back to the learner. ![[Pasted image 20250919151040.png]] #### 3. Discussion In discussion with peers, the learner has to [[Articulation|articulate]] their questions or ideas, and then listen to comprehend what the peer may say. This can happen verbally, but also through group chats, reddit and more. ![[Pasted image 20250919153026.png]] #### 4. Practice The teacher sets up a learning environment, this may be a [[Makerspace|makerspace]] with a goal to create a robot that can draw a circle. The learner will then engage with the environment in pursuit of a goal, where their interaction with the environment produces feedback and information, which aids in learning. This aligns heavily with [[Constructionism|constructionism]] where the artefact of construction mediates your learning processes. Here, the learning designer should think carefully about how an environment and goal can be designed, to lead to appropriate development of learner concepts, as the link between design and knowledge produced through interaction is less clear. ![[Pasted image 20250919165542.png]] #### 5. Collaboration The learner collaborates with their peers mediated through a learning environment. For example, in creating a collaborative blog post, a learner and a peer may discuss to set goals and guidelines that regulate their collaborative behaviour, then engage in the process of editing the same artefact, this provides feedback through seeing areas of contention, which may motivate negotiation of shared meaning that leads to the [[Assimilation|assimilation]] of new ideas within the learners mind. This is a more complex type of learning in comparison to the other activities. ![[Pasted image 20250919153836.png]] #### 6. Production Production can be essays as part of formative or summative assessment, or a [[Personal wiki|personal wiki like this!]] The main purpose lies in bringing ideas together and helping the student consolidate their knowledge structures. Whilst production leads to learner concepts being communicated to the teacher, it is more complex than that in creating an organising process that regulates the students behaviour, and produces cycles through relevant nodes to produce knowledge. It makes me think of [[Activity theory|activity theory]] in how a goal provides meaning and drives particular actions in complex activity systems that are dynamic and difficult to control. ![[Pasted image 20250919154931.png]] ### All together Activities are not solely performed in isolation, but the [[Learning design|learning design]] can include many different activities that increase the cycles which can result in better student learning. These activities act as a summary and proxy to the main theories of teaching and learning, such as [[Constructionism|constructionism]], [[Social constructivism|social constructivism]], [[epfl-jdpls/_archive/candidacy/feedback|feedback]], [[Inquiry-based learning|inquiry-based learning]] and more. But in a format that can be reasoned on more simply by a learning designer. Seeing a learning design play out through the arrows that are followed in the interactions that are had, forms as a sort of engine that represents the learning process. Though we should nonetheless be careful not to think about it as the real actions, but make sure that we see it as a framework. ![[Pasted image 20250919155222.png]] The following is the actual diagram used by [[Diana Laurillard]] in her explanations. ![[Pasted image 20250919155642.png]] ## Uses These learning types form the basis of the [[ABC curriculum design model]] which has a strong-focus on student-centred learning. It also forms the basis of the [[Learning designer (UCL)|learning designer]] application developed by [[Diana Laurillard|Diana]] and her team.