Ab fab my goldoy man.
- Leaidan

An interesting approach. Much better to start with learning rather than what is to be examined.  My suspicion is that you could use any number of different underlying frameworks (including any number of learning style theories and possibly even astrology) to achieve something similar: it's about thinking about the diverse ways learning happens more than the particular framework. I tend to use the Lewin/Kolb cycle in a similar way, sometimes Pask's serialist/holist model, occasionally even multiple intelligences. Though I am highly sceptical of all of them as meaningful representations of reality, it's useful in the design process, as you say, to have an aide memoire. With that in mind, using this framework might make it rather easy to forget reflection. Reflection seems to be an implied afterthought in the production learning type, rather than something central to the activity. This is quite strange, given Laurillard's Conversational Framework in which reflection plays such a central and critical binding role.

My more general slight concern with the approach is that, in a truly integrated design, all of these learning types are tightly intertwingled. Especially when experiences/activities are correllated with technological toolsets (as suggested by the cards), the metaphor runs the risk of being treated as one of assembling pieces to build a machine. It would be very easy to come up with a Lego-like construction, one of those awful designs where students go to one place for their discussions, another for their acquisition, another for their practice, etc. Perhaps it would be better thought of as being more like a cake, in which the individual ingredients are inseparable and indistinguishable from one another when they come out of the oven. And, of course, it makes a huge difference how you mix them, and how you bake them, with each part and each process deeply affecting all the rest.

Thanks for posting the link to  your session, Sandra. I am really looking forward to the Impact UDL conference.

Andrew, thanks for the report. I am finding more and more open source materials such as papers and articles on institutional websites that can substitute well for book compilations. As you know, at AU, at least for the present, savings through using OER are not being passed on to students, but that may change. What I am doing is also creating parallel open non-credit courses (OCW) which use the OER for the benefit of the publc generally.

I guess multiple choice questions are an efficient way of "measuring knowledge". There was a prof from U. Alberta who did studied the MCQs on Alberta Education's standardized tests (Grades 3, 6, 9 and diploma exams in Grade 12) and came to the conclusion that they tested reading more than content. To prove his point, he showed us the patterns in the test and then gave us questions from a Math 31 test. Even though most of the audience had not taken Math 31 (calculus), we were able to answer the questions and get about 60% based on our knowledge of how the test was constructed. The strategies were very similar to the strategies on the TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, so that's how we taught test taking for achievement tests. 

Nice example, Mary. It suggests to me that they are often just a good way to measure knowledge of how to do MCQs!

I think objective tests are mostly OK for some basic fact-oriented subjects as long as they are used solely as a formative learning tool and not for accreditation. Even when you use tricks like confidence weightings to reduce the benefits of guessing to a minimum, they still tell us very little about what people can actually do, but they can in principle be a useful way for learners to figure out for themselves what they know about. Unfortunately, even when the marks count for nothing and they are the only people that will ever see the results, many learners still tend to try to game the system. I'm not sure whether that is in our nature or something we have learned, but it's weird.