Redesign subject to support group work in distance education

This paper is about a distance education subject redesign undertaken in School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University. This paper presents a theoretical framework supporting a constructive alignment in subject redesign grounded on some valuable learning theories, namely social constructivism, cooperative learning and collaborative learning. The theoretical framework guided the redesign of a postgraduate subject INF441 Information Management in Organizations. In the subject redesign, constructive alignment for learning environment, intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities and assessment tasks were carefully checked. The paper reports the effects of the subject learning design after the subject was subsequently taught by the same designer in the role of a subject coordinator/lecturer. Group work tools in CSU Interact (a learning management system using Sakai) were able to create an appropriate learning environment for the successful running of the subject. The subject redesign created an effective beneficial learning environment in the presence of the affordance of the learning management system ‘CSU Interact’.