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COMMENTARY:Course Design and the New Technologies
If the organization is ready to change, what is the starting point with the new technologies? In higher education settings, the starting point is learning and learners; in other words, the starting point is the ending point. Traditional course development resembles a Sunday afternoon drive with the driver in full-control of where the passengers go, what they see and do, and what stops they make along the way. The traditional topic outline will not suffice. Choosing a vehicle, or technology, in which to travel, even before knowing the destination, is equally inappropriate. Designers for courses using the new technologies begin by describing the destination at which the learners must arrive. This new approach rotates the course designer's thinking away from what professors teach to what learners learn. The learners must know what they should be able to do at the end of a course and how to demonstrate that the required learning did, in fact, take place. Similarly, the new designer describes points along the way where the learner will demonstrate what has been learned. Again, like the traveler, I want to know what places I will visit. I need to know in what sequence I will make these stops. The stops tell me what I need to take along. The sequence tells me how I shall pack. With the destination defined, course design must now work backwards through the course to identify the intervention points where the professor checks the learning progress. The sequence tells the course designer what information, instructions, or interactions need to be available to the learner at the various stops. The designer has a closet full of possible activities. In addition, the designer has choices related to the five learner-orientations (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste); to the four, widely-accepted basic learning-styles (mastery, understanding, self-expressive, and interpersonal); and to the seven, recognized multiple-intelligences (linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, inter-personal and intra-personal). From all of these choices, the designer develops matrices which show the integration of the activities, the orientations, the styles, and the intelligences. This integration, then, defines all aspects of the learning and all ways to validate the learning. Not all of these matrices will be completed upon the first redesign of a course. Rather, these matrices grow, turn, and twist as the designer learns about the learners. The clearer that both the learner and the professor are about the actual learning, not the teaching, the more successful the learner will be. Now, with the integration established, the designer chooses the technology(ies) most appropriate for each aspect of the learning. |
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