ABC LD – A new Toolkit for Rapid Learning Design

Abstract

ABC Learning Design (ABC LD) is a high-energy, hands-on curriculum development workshop from University College London (UCL). In just 90 minutes teaching teams work together to create a visual “storyboard”. The storyboard is made up of pre-printed cards representing the type and sequence of learning activities (both online and offline) required to meet the module or programme learning outcomes. All the resources have been released under Creative Commons licenses and are free to download, adapt and use.

ABC LD is now popular across European tertiary education and beyond. Participants have found the workshop-based “sprint” approach to be quick, engaging and productive. The original UCL or “base” ABC LD is built around a collaborative and intensive 90’ workshop in which module teams work together to produce a paper-based storyboard describing the student journey.

Over the last two years UCL has led an Erasmus+ project to develop and evaluate the ABC LD method with 12 partners (https://abc-ld.org). We have focused on localisation to institutional contexts and have explored the important link between storyboard designs and the Virtual Learning Environment. The main output is a freely downloadable Toolkit of resources and guides, enabling any college or university to adapt and adopt the method.

Although developed to promote blended learning, during the COVID emergency, some institutions have now modified ABC LD to be facilitated remotely to support their need for a rapid transition to online learning. ABC LD is proving an effective method in this new format, too.