How To Stay On The Path Of Course Creation

There are three things that ensure your students stay on the path to their learning destination.

That is the “learning objective” because that tells them “where they need to go”, the actual content which tell them “how to get there”, and then there is “actually getting there” which is the “action” that your students need to take.

So we have learning objective – content – then action. These all need to be in alignment.

A module will not work if the objective is to go over there but you describe how to go over there but then you expect your students to go over there.

You don’t even want to via from the path for a little bit and then come back on. So as you design and build your course, ensure you regularly check that you are on the path with every module.

If you find the alignment is out, then you will need to adjust either the learning objective, content or action. It’s totally ok if you do. It’s all just part of the messy middle of the creative process.

If you do make a change to a module, particularly the learning objective then step back and make sure your course story is still sound.

Ensuring that module still flows with the module before and after on the path to the final destination, the course objective.

Now I mentioned that your students should take “action” in each module.

You’ve shown your students how to get somewhere so it only makes sense that they apply what they have learnt and try and get there right.

A common mistake though is to have an assessment like a quiz as the action. This is fine if it aligns to the objective but all to common this is not the case.

If you teach them how to bake a cake you could give them a quiz on the ingredients but a better actions would be better if they tried to bake the cake.