Perhaps you have encountered the "Backwards Design" model put forth by Wiggins and McTighe. Whether you are a pro at this concept or just coming to it for the first time, understanding backward design is a critical component of effective online education. Dee Fink (2013) describes these three foundational aspects of Backward Design theory as these three questions we must answer:
To achieve these three tenets of elearning design, you will want to storyboard your course (or wirefame / flowchart your course website by chunking your course into modules further chunked into lessons.
For more information about Backwards Design, please watch the two videos lectures from one of the creators of the concept, Grant Wiggins. Please also check out these additional resources below.
To begin your backward design process, you will need to first determine what your measurable learning goals are. At the end of the course, what 3 to 5 things will your students be able to do, describe, or demonstrate? You will not want to teach to more than three to 5 learning goals (outcomes) in a single term or semester. Likewise, goals should be achievable and in the Zone of Proximal Development. You may choose to base your learning goals on Bloom's or Fink's Taxonomy. Below is a learning outcome generator based on Bloom's Taxonomy, but you can easily substitute Fink's terminology to develop your measurable, quantifiable learning outcomes.
(Note: Is the embedded Learning Outcome Generator below not working for you? Try visiting the website: https://elearn.sitehost.iu.edu/courses/tos/gen2/ )
Bloom's Revised Taxonomy presents a categorical method for demonstrating knowledge acquisition. Check out this guide:
Dee Fink proposes a different taxonomy for demonstrating significant learning. Check out this guide for more information:
If you've done your job correctly, you'll have created a series of learning outcomes which are distinctly measurable by performance or demonstration. Next up is deciding how you will accept these demonstrations on the web. It will be important that you are assessing the actual learning achievement and not the bells and whistles of whatever software you will ask students to use to deliver it to you. For example, if you are seeking public speaking skill, do not grade an assessment video on the quality of the editing but rather evaluate the quality of the public speaking in the video.
There are many software for assessing student skill online. These funnel down to one or more of three forms of interaction design. These are INTERACTION BETWEEN:
These can be further extrapolated into:
Remember to use smaller, formative assessments as part of your course design toward the higher stakes, summative assessments that measure the learning goals you created.
Now that you have identified the end goals for the course and how your students will demonstrate achieving those goals, it is time to determine how you will deliver your course. This delivery modality will impact your content, what content you construct yourself and what content you curate from Open Education Resources, and your formative assessments (those short, low-stakes assessments which help learners know they are on the right track and help you validate your teaching strategies.
We offer several organization strategies in the Google Apps section of this site, but to get you started, ask yourself if you will organize by:
This learning content is created using Google Sites, and we focus on using Google Apps for Education to deliver your own eLearning content because these apps are made available by Google for free to educational institutions, but there are a variety of other resources you can use or integrate into your teaching strategy.
While you will likely choose to create some of your own content in the form of documents, slides, live-stream lectures (recorded or not), and videos, you will also want to curate some learning from Open Education Resources. You can also crowdsource OER research by creating learning projects where your students must find content and share it back with the class by wiki or presentation.
There are many ways to design or curate course content. The videos in this section offer a list of OER resources and a note about gameification, which is a strategy for delivering your course around the concepts of game-play. To find content that might support your course, check out the Internet Archive, which includes public domain books, magazines, videos, and video games. The Library of Congress also has a variety of historical videos in the public domain. Lastly, TED ed and Khan Academy offer distinctly educational resources on a variety of topics across multiple disciplines appropriate for many ages.
When your course is ready for publication, you should launch or publish your course. You do not need to have your entire course built. You might, for instance, have just the first two weeks prepared and then a schedule for launching new modules routinely every Monday, for example.
When publishing, it is ideal to send out a welcome letter with instructions about how to access the course and connect with you. In this age of Covid shut-down, it is also advisable that you include a high-touch, hands-on element--send something in the mail. Create a kit that goes to the house. Teaching geology? Send a box of rocks. Biology? Send a fetal pig for dissection. Art? Send supplies for a paper sculpture. Literature? Send books. Connect by post and use what you send in your virtual meetings for further context and social presence