Having reviewed your instructional needs & those of your learners, you will have established the context of the desired learning experience. The 8 steps in the tabs below will guide you through the design process.
Warning: the steps in the process appear to be linear, but this is a fiction perpetrated by the numbering of the steps below. In practice, the process is essentially iterative. Multiple design threads occur simultaneously and at different levels. They affect previously 'completed' steps as ongoing development, production and testing reveals areas which need attention.
Explore the material under the 8 tabs below:
1. Write Learning Outcomes
2. Select Strategy
3. Create Assessments
4. Develop Activities
5. Develop Content
6. Design Interface & Nav
7. Evaluate Unit
8. Documenting Your Design
1. Write learning outcomes
Produce clear, concise, objective descriptions of what your learners will be able to do by the end of a given learning unit.
Of all the activities involved in the instructional design process, developing learning outcomes is one of the most critical.
Learning outcomes are often more useful when expressed with active verbs which spell out what students will be able to do.
To achieve clarity, avoid expressions such as 'to know', 'to understand', 'to appreciate', to be acquainted with' since they are too vague to convey the exact nature of the outcome being sought. More active and explicit verbs such as 'state', 'show', 'explain', 'define', 'describe', 'predict', 'recognise' and 'criticise' are generally more useful - and they tend to push us into designing more challenging, real world activities for our students.
Well-written learning outcomes allow you to generate assessments which are logically mapped to those outcomes, ensuring that your unit is internally consistent.
A very useful resource on Learning Outcomes (Word doc) may be found on the University of Tasmania's website.
You may wish to use the Conceptual Mapping (Word) template described in Tab 8 to help document outcomes as a precursor to mapping them to assessments and activities.
Now go to Tab 2
2. Select or develop an instructional strategy
Click image to enlarge
Click image to enlarge
As you begin to formulate your instructional strategy, it may be helpful to use R. Gagne's"Nine events of instruction" * as an organizational tool.
On the other hand, if you're not a behaviourist, it may not.
There are many conceptual frameworks which can frame your thinking in this area. Some are even useful.
Try to retain an awareness of the purpose of your online unit - is it designed to operate in supplementary mode - i.e. to support your face-to-face teaching?
Or is it meant to guide, motivate, assess, provide communication channels, deliver content and achieve all your learning outcomes in fully online mode?
How will you - and your learners - know when the required outcomes have been achieved?
It may seem unusual to suggest that you begin to create assessment instruments near the beginning of the design process rather than at the end ...
... but the best time to develop assessment items is immediately after finishing the learning outcomes, so you can directly map them to each other.
The passages below (and the diagram) is from Learning Outcomes (Word doc) on the University of Tasmania's website:
" ... It is essential that the learning outcomes form the basis of what is assessed and how it is assessed.
Each outcome should be assessed. If a stated outcome is not assessed, neither you nor your students will know if it has been realised. If the learning outcome is framed in such a way that assessment is not feasible, you need to reframe it so that demonstration of attainment is possible.
This does not mean that you need the same number of assessment tasks as learning outcomes – for example, the one assessment task may measure the level of attainment of a number of related learning outcomes.
You can construct a simple table to map the links between your learning outcomes and assessment tasks. This may not only reveal where you might be under assessing, but also highlight where you may be over assessing a particular learning outcome."
You may wish to use the Conceptual Mapping (Word) template described in Tab 8 to help document the relationships between outcomes and assessments.
We all know that assessment doesn't have to occur at the end of a learning unit. It may be wothwhile thinking about how to integrate formative assessment during instruction, and to consider exploring PBL, scenario-based and other methods of assessment.
Design your assessments so that they are congruent with the chosen learning styles and experiences. A creative, enquiry-based, learner and process-centred unit can be degraded by inappropriate quizzes that concentrate on rote-learning or simple recall of information and facts. Consider using rubrics such as this PBL Assessment Rubric. (pdf)
Experience an online lecture - Online Automated Testing Design - by Eric Shepherd, President of Questionmark. You will be asked to login after which you can access a Wimba® audio lecture/powerpoint presentation.
Now go to Tab 4
4. Develop student activities and tasks
Once you finish your learning outcomes and map assessment tasks to these, you can choose or develop activities designed to support the achievement of those outcomes.
To repeat the advice from Learning Outcomes (Word doc) on the University of Tasmania's website:
Linking learning outcomes to tasks and activities:
"The action verbs of your learning outcomes will flag the sorts of learning activities that will best lead to their attainment. For example, if one learning outcome is for students to be able to analyse and interpret data, then there should be activities where students are asked to analyse and interpret data, and opportunities for them to monitor, assess and receive feedback on their progress regarding these skills.
If, as an outcome, students are expected to be able to construct a written argument based on particular discipline conventions, then they will need to be taught the skills involved and engaged in activities that allow them to practise and refine those skills."
Here is a sample of what other people think about the nature of learning tasks ...
Helen Wozniak from the University of Sydney has some useful ideas about online discussions (pdf)
The University of NSW has an online overview of its own approach to designing learning acitivities. Being based on the "constructive alignment" principles of J. Biggs, this material may well resonate with those at this institution who tread a similar path.
Note that on-line delivery systems such as WebCT / Blackboard may have limitations if you are proposing to use large numbers of high-bandwidth resources such as videos. However, if potential problems are identified early, the staff of the Flexible Learning Unit may be able to advise you of other ways of achieving your learning outcomes without compromising the learning experience.
You may wish to use the Conceptual Mapping (Word) template described in Tab 8 to help document the relationships between outcomes, assessments and activities & tasks.
Now go to Tab 5
5. Develop the main content
If you are a subject matter expert (SME) with the responsibility for writing content, consider the proposed delivery mode and your target learner needs.
Online content is mainly self-paced and instructor-independent. It needs an embedded navigational system that is both logical and intuitive and provides the learning context which helps to compensate for the 'missing' guiding presence of a teacher. The online content development process is therefore more time-hungry than that of blended or supplementary mode content development - in fact, so much so that you need to be mindful of the time, resources and budget you actually have available.
Here is the process, with the content design phase emphasised
Depending on the support provided by their team, SMEs are likely to produce content in various stages of readiness for production. When done properly, the process can be lengthy, generally using up all the contingency time for major revisions which is (or should be!) built into the project plan. Ideally, all reviews of content should be completed before the production stage commences, but in the real world, SMEs even request major changes after seeing the material online. Other SMEs forget that development of supplementary resources for their unit is part of the content creation process. As a result, any time-lines originally specified could be unrecognisable after this continuous, but necessary review process.
SMEs are also frequently unaware of what is involved in the production process which follows the completion of their material, and that it can take longer than their own content creation process. Understanding this can help SMEs appreciate that delays in developing their material will inevitably cause slippage in the entire project, sometimes to the extent of missing the proposed roll-out date.
If the content design phase is allowed time for proper completion, the complex steps in the next stage - production - can be completed much faster because they will not require fixes, patches or rebuilds. Unexpected additions to content can not always simply be 'added' during production; at best, changes to the content's architecture and navigation will need to be made as well. At worst, the production process needs to be started afresh.
Now go to Tab 6
6. Design an engaging interface & a navigational architecture that supports the desired learning
Here are some examples of design approaches. Some are good, some are adequate and some are just awful. Click on the images below to enlarge them and to bring up additional information.
A poorly designed home page layout containing a link to a page which is even worse ...
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A less cluttered home page
An interactive home page with popup info boxes
A home page using a visual navigation metaphor
When you design for WebCT/Blackboard, it might appear that you are locked in to its proprietary user interface - and to a limited degree, you are. However, within these constraints, you still have freedom to influence the student experience by creating an attractive interface and navigational architecture that gently nudges students along the path you would like them to take. Or even compels them, if that's what you prefer ...
While interface/navigational design is not quite as important in face-to-face or supplementary modes of teaching (because you can contextualise and guide student learning), it becomes critical where students are expected to find their own way through the maze.
* This stage is not often stressed in traditional ISD literature, although it is sometimes implied. Despite this, its importance in workable online unit design should not be overlooked.
Now go to Tab 7
7. Evaluate your learning unit
How can you make sure that your newly created unit is effective?
If your circumstances allow, the best way to test your design is by employing a formal system of evaluation.
Of course, while your learners are often your most useful critics, it can also be a good idea to ask colleagues to act as 'critical friends' by providing informal peer reviews of your instructional materials and strategies.
You can also embed surveys and other feedback instruments within your course materials.
Referencing to external criteria by employing a rubric may be useful.
Various rubrics have been developed to allow comparison of your design with generally accepted criteria. One such rubric is provided here (pdf). More information on rubrics is available in the Resources section.
A comprehensive guide to evaluation by Clayton R. Wright, PhD of the Instructional Media and Design department at Grant MacEwan College, Canada may also be useful:
8. Documenting the Design - and gaining clarity in the process
One approach that helps to both document the process and tie the various design threads together is a process known as 'Conceptual Mapping'.
You can use a Conceptual Mapping (Word) template to help document the relationships which need to be established between outcomes, assessments, activities and resources.
Thoughts from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology on 
