Grounding Learning Design on Teaching Practice: The LEDITA Learning Design Tool for Italian Language Teachers

Learning Design (LD) is a key factor to improve results of educational practices. LD has started to become an important and recognized activity among teachers and, in recent years, many LD software tools have been developed, to simplify the process of design and to foster the reflection about teaching. However, these tools, also because of usability problems, seem to suffer of an incompatibility between the support of design sharing and the encouragement of teaching reflection. This paper investigates the problem and presents the LEDITA tool, a LD editor developed within a participatory research project for the representation and sharing of designs between a community of teachers of Italian as a second/foreign language. A usability test was conducted with the objective to take a holistic look at the LEDITA system and gathering data concerning the process of creation of a learning design and the effectiveness of the LEDITA tool. Results from the study show a good usability level and a consistent support to the reflection on teaching practice, especially in relation to the organization and management of knowledge and content.