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The past decade has seen a significant expansion of flexible learning in higher education as
new communication technologies have broadened the scope and potential for online
learning. With this expansion has come the need for pedagogically sound learning
experiences and an interest in reusing effective pedagogical designs. The concept of a
‘learning design’ - a formalism for documenting educational practice to facilitate sharing
and reuse by teachers, is being researched as one way of supporting dissemination of ‘best
practice’. This paper reports an analytical study that sought to advance understanding of
what constitutes an effective learning design description based on an analysis of learning
designs in an existing repository. The study contended that an effective learning design
description comprises a clear description of the pedagogy, a quality rating and advice on
potential reuse. Six, from a repository of 32, were identified as effective learning design
descriptions.