Design and Develop: Partners in crime

For the next two weeks you will be expected to work through, and reflect on, the design and development phases of your innovation in lEarning. For this post, let us focus on the Design phase, with a hint toward the Development phase of the ADDIE model.

Generally, the design phase is one in which you will create a solid plan for the prototype, set objectives for the teaching and learning activity/module, decide on assessment methods and make final decisions regarding the tool or media that you will be using. It is also imperative that you receive feedback on these ideas as you are formulating them; from colleagues, students, or fellow MPhil colleagues!

So, as illustrated below:

•Determine objectives or outcomes for the learning activity

•Determine the teaching approach or method aka classroom/online activities

•Determine the assessment activities linked to these objective and learning activities

•Confirm the tool or media used

•Put everything on paper

•Create a rough version of the prototype

As with any other teaching and learning intervention, remember that this lEarning process is one which should be theoretically grounded. As an example, please see the following articles (also loaded in your SUNLearn Reading folders). These authors remind us of the importance of a theoretical basis for our work, specifically drawing on learning theories. Flynn et al The second article uses the ADDIE process in their intervention and may therefore apply to what you are doing now, especially as an example of how the ADDIE can be used. Gedik et al

One of the important outcomes of the design phase, once a good theoretical background is laid, is for a rough idea of the prototype to be selected and developed. Examples of these could be using a wiki for gathering information in a group assignment (e.g. wikispaces.com), using tools such as clickers or audience response systems (socrative.com) for in-class questions/games/interaction, creating interactive teaching and assessment online classrooms via a learning management system or Google (blendspace.com), perhaps you would like to create short videos/podcasts (screencast-o-matic.com), or encouraging critical thinking and analysis/scaffolding of information to understand the connections between concepts (cmaptools.com). The possibilities are endless. The important thing to remember is not to be carried away by the excitement of the tools, but rather to refer back to the theoretical basis for the change and the guidance from your analysis phase.

So there you go.....Analysis done! Actually not, remember, the value of any design-based process is that you constantly review/analyse/evaluate what you are doing in each phase and apply this to your design.
You have found a problem and thought of possible solutions in your Analysis phase. Now you will start designing your intervention and analyse the feasibility of your idea as you go through feedback from those around you. When you reach the next phase, analysis of what you are developing will help you to go back and refine your design, and finally, your evaluation of the entire process may end up in a new needs analysis or highlight gaps in your initial analysis. We grow as we learn and we learn as we change the landscape of our teaching environment.

Happy designing!