3 Designing a Coherent Course

This week, we will move further ahead with the design process by tieing the course outcomes to measures that will help us assess how much students are progressing and at what points they have reached the desired outcomes.

As we have seen in Module 2: Setting Significant Outcomes, the Backward Design model can provide a core framework to ensure the alignment of course learning outcomes with the assessment and learning activities. However, additional steps are recommended to ensure that the course helps support learner persistence.  We will now take a closer look at one of the predominant design models that can help us successfully design a course for an online environment. The design model in question is called  ADDIE, which is the abbreviation for the individual steps in the design process. (If you are curious to learn more about this model, access Tony Bates. Teaching in the Digital Age. Chapter 4.3)

Last week we were doing the work for the first stage – the Analysis. This week, we will move into the Design Stage. In the weeks 3-5, you can then move into the Development stage to create specific elements of your online modules. We will simulate the Implementation in forms of trial sessions, so that we can end this course with the Evaluation Stage.