How splendid is Larnaca in September! The weather has an almost equatorial feel with perfect conditions day and night. It is pleasantly warm from sunset until late morning and bearably hot during the day; the sea has a calming presence with its magic blue and the colourful umbrellas peppered along the beach, and palm trees happily giving the final stamp of approval for everyone to stay worry free, relax and have a good time with friends.

Meanwhile at the Sun Beach hotel, a team made of colleagues from UK, Australia, Greece and Cyprus met in a big and bright conference room to discuss Learning Design. The group that gathered in Larnaca representing many years of experience in this field planned to establish a broad conceptual framework as a springboard for the further development of the Learning Design as a methodology.

This has been a perfectly timed workshop. The idea came up last year in December during the LAMS Conference in Sydney, to develop something that would bring all the research related to Learning Design into one contiguous body of work that captures the essence of Learning Design for the benefit of those who are interested in this methodology. The ICEM Conference 2012 (starting in the second half of the week) in Nicosia and Professor James Dalziel’s work on the ALTC National Teaching Fellowship proved to be a great catalyst for excellent collaboration.

Two important things came out of this work: (1) a comprehensive timeline of major events, formation of communities, publications and initiatives that occurred in the field of Learning Design over the past ten years or so, and (2) a high level map of the field of Learning Design (see below).

This is a great beginning for the consolidation of the knowledge generated through research, publications, conferences and many projects implemented in the past decade. The shared view signals an opportunity not only for a more productive academic research in this field, but also for helping teachers around the world, software developers, educational consultants and institutions to adopt Learning Design methodology for a more effective way of teaching students acquire knowledge and learn new skills.

The workshop and its outcomes felt like a strong direction setter and the team agreed unanimously that this event will be referred to in the history of this field as Larnaca Declaration on Learning Design.