Learning design is an approach that considers learning materials as having both a final product, the
educational resource, and a design that captures the intent of the product. This design is often implicit and has
not been valued as a product in itself. OER challenge that position as it becomes important to communicate why
material has been developed so that users can make best use of the material and also see the designs as
shareable in themselves. Designs matter both to educators, to understand potential reuse, and to users to help
them select material relevant to their context.

Two related aspects are whether representing the design explicitly will help users interpret OER, and whether promoting particular designs (or patterns) will encourage different ways to use OER. Current work in the OU has established use of Compendium (a free knowledge mapping tool from OpenLearn) as a representation tool, and a workshop-based approach to involving the educator and producer community. A community site Cloudworks
(http://cloudworks.ac.uk) provides a way to support workshops and share designs at differing levels of sophistication.

Yannis Dimitriadis joined OLnet as a Visiting Expert Fellow and has helped estabish the value of applying a pattern approach to using OER for collaborative learning, even where the original design targeted individual learning.

Outcome on the specific OER level:
1. Design-based description in a shareable representation.
2. Data on the interpretation of design and how it can support reuse.
3. Materials to capture the approach and enhance participation.
4. Use data on designs in relation to OER

On the network level:
1. A collection of social objects that enable research discussions .
2. Community building through sharing of representations and interlinking with the OER community.
3. Integration of tools (e.g. from Cloudworks) within the OLnet framework.