OLDSMOOC wk3
As a member of the team that developed the first Carpe Diem workshops at Leicester, I’m delighted to see how it has been further developed – the 7Cs of Learning Design idea and the very practical format of the process (always a feature of Carpe Diem) is really exciting and looks like an excellent framework for developing a course design – and the course itself. Carpe Diem was always about ending up with not just a course design but the start of the actual course activities and collecting of resources.
Thinking about what I think of first – is constructive alignment. The aims comes first for me, then the outcomes, then the activities fill in to ensure the two are linked. Aims, assessments and activities do not just form elements of the course design, they have a critical connection. This is something I had an idea about but having talked in the past few years extensively to academics and got to know the requirements of the University system, it seems easier to do it this way so you’re sure you “jump through the procedural hoops” and also support real learning. The aims and outcomes are key to effectively facilitating learning, and effective assessment should be considered early on, even before the activities, because then the activities can be designed to lead into assessment (like e-tivities that lead towards an essay assessment). It is too easy to assess with an essay, or an exam, when there might be better methods. Then comes the whole design of activities.
My favourite tool will still be the matrix that locates the activities against the outcomes and the assessments. Maybe the 3 As need adding to the 7Cs… I find the alignment matrix and the story board (which might be a session plan) useful in sharing the vision with colleagues. The third thing I use is an expanded document in the form of a table that fully describes the activities and assessments, based on the story board.
Off to look into the other resources to see if there’s a visualisation technique that incorporates this (maybe the &Cs does when you get more deeply into it, I haven’t read everything about it yet). Going to start with the Course Features Cards, then the Course View Map and Activity Profile:. May be a very useful addition to the Toolkit I just described.