The Course Design Process

As an Instructional Technologist in the K12 setting, I begin instructional planning by brainstorming the essential skills I want participants to walk away having a firm grasp on.  My focus is student learning, student engagement, and teacher facilitation.  The European Association of Distance Teaching recommends establishing a need for the course and then designing the framework, and I agree these elements are foundational to good design.

"The course design process should demonstrate a rational progression from establishing the need for the course within the overall curriculum, through the design of a conceptual framework to the detailed development and production of course materials....The development of each course should provide a clear documented course specification which sets out the relationship between learning outcomes and their assessment."

(European Association of Distance Teaching Universities, http://www.eadtu.nl/e-xcellenceQS/files/members/E-xcellenceManualGrey/Introduction.html)

Very few in education understand the pedagogical shift that needs to take place in the classroom.  Technology hardware is often confused with instructional technology practices.  Alternative assessments are considered outside the realm of 'legitimate data' to use as formative assessment to guide instruction or to determine level of mastery by assigning a grade.  So while Instructional Technologists work diligently to integrate student activities into curriculum, such activities are often regarded as fluff, not pertinent to learning skills or the content in a course.  

The following video demonstrates a NEED for teaching students (and all learners) how to sift through information, analyze its reliability while considering biases and author's point of view, communicate and collaborate with others to gain depth and insight, and publish and share what they have discovered.