Design

Introduction

In order for anything to be built properly, you need a blueprint and a plan to follow. Since course designers sometimes talk about a "design blueprint" or "course architecture", the metaphor and theme for this lesson is the blueprint.

All visible things are created twice: first, with a mental creation, and second, with the physical creation. The course design blueprint is the first, or mental creation, of your project. This includes your course map, lesson event strategies and treatments, graphical user interface design, assessment plan, and your storyboard.

Design is the second ADDIE phase. Every instructional design project benefits from careful planning during the Design Phase. Design Worksheet 12 is the main "blueprint" document in this lesson. It requires a lot of brainstorming and creative thinking to organize the chunks of a course.

The design process is partly art and partly following steps of a proven process. It is hard to teach and learn to design anything in a linear, step-by-step way. So, use the 6 Design worksheets over and over, even in a back and forth manner as you brainstorm.

Continue designing until you are satisfied that you see clearly how you will develop the course and produce the media in the physical creation steps of Lesson 3. If you do the design well, then the students who use your project will have a much better chance of achieving the goals of your instruction.

Design Steps

Design Steps (PDF)

Design Video

Design Video (MOV)

Resources