#Design4Learning: designing for the future of higher education

Technology enhanced learning has the potential to develop and deliver innovative learning opportunities to improve the student learning experience. Learning Design is more important today than ever before with the advent of new virtual learning environments and technological tools where a new set of affordances is needed to support learning. Relatively few studies have investigated how educators in practice are actually planning, designing, implementing and evaluating their learning design decisions. This special edition from the best papers presented at the #Design4Learning conference in 2014 and provides advice in this area through mapping a number of facets of learning designs that should be reviewed before embarking on the production of new curriculum, or revising an existing module. These variables include: the use of new technologies; flipped classrooms; live proctoring of electronic tests; online staff development; together with a strong theoretical framework for the evaluation of an intervention, while also not forgetting to assess the status function of claims made about differing Learning Designs. The special issue illustrates that Learning Designs are not static entities. They are complex multifaceted student centred activity schedules that evolve in tandem with the growth in knowledge in any given subject domain.