Diana Laurillard (2012) discusses design practice as, "...Needing to respect the rich, unfolding nature of the inquiry, opening up rather than narrowing." I've found this statement to ring truer than other "design" quotes, tips, or tricks. As I've worked to develop my own ID routine and perfect the best method for designing courses, I've determined that there is no one perfect technique. At least not for me. I've redesigned and developed courses and so far each process was different than the previous. I've used Wiggin's Backwards Design, I've used ADDIE, I've used this and I've used that. After last week's post on Cathy Moore's Action Mapping (read more here), I decided to post this week on my own mapping. Moore uses the following figure to map and fill three roles:
Design document
Outline
Content repository
The goal is in the middle (bulls-eye), each exclamation point is a behavior that students will need in order to reach the goal, the hand is a practice activity for the previous behavior, and the information icon implies including only vital information for the goal. Although this mapping is a great place to start with a new or fresh course design; I've found it is difficult to implement when a pre-existing course is already put into practice.
Linking back to the quote I used at the beginning of this post, I took Moore's mapping plan and tweaked it to work for me. While reviewing a course with a lot of moving pieces, I took the mapping idea and linked all course activities directly with the course goals or objectives (see below).
After mapping the course activities with the learning objectives/goals, I'm able to see where the weaknesses are in the course (yellow box below). My next step in this process is then addressing this concern with my SME. Is this a learning objective that needs additional support or is this a learning objective that course be potentially removed from the course because there is not enough space to cover this topic? Finding holes like these, help me as an IDer to determine the next steps in my process. In this case, I created a few sample assignments to help support the motivation learning objective (if this is the route the SME wants).
Do you have a method that works best for you? Do you stick with one design model or are you more fluid like Laurillard mentioned above? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Until next week,
-h