Developing your design

This week we take a step toward using what we have learnt in the analysis phase and putting it into action. The trick here is to NOT jump straight in and do  anything, rather, it is time to use the power of the pen / keyboard and design the intervention you have planned. Think about the students you are targeting, the module that you are working in, the problem you're addressing.....then, and only then, can you start to design the intervention.

I am currently sitting in another province in South Africa, on a family holiday. It would have been great to just jump into the car and start to drive. However, there were a few things that I needed to do first. I needed to know when both my family, and the family we're visiting, would be able to be on holiday. Once we knew that, we planned the route we would travel, estimated the amount of money we would need for our trip, looked at the weather to determine what clothes to wear, etc. etc. etc.

If we had not done all of this, we could easily have ended up driving along and getting stuck without petrol. Or perhaps we would have by chance arrived at our destination and found the family we're visiting were away on business. This is a very simple example that I am using to illustrate the importance of the phase we have just completed, Analysis, and the phase we are entering, Design.

Using the analysis of your situation, you will now need to design the intervention with particular attention paid to the possible pitfalls. If you are designing a new method of assessment using technology, have you thought about the adaptations needed in the teaching and learning activities of the module? You could be thinking of creating a learning activity using social media, but have you considered the ethical implications of this?

The design of any intervention requires a step-by-step plan of how you will execute your proposed endeavour. Do not underestimate the importance of this step....if we did that in the example I gave earlier, I would have ended up Richmond with a very unhappy family in tow :)