Designing a blended course

For your reference, if you are designing a course for the first time or redesigning an existing course, the first three steps listed below are based on the “backward” design approach by Wiggins and McTighe (1998), which aligns course goals and objectives with course assessments and activities. Step four will help you decide which activities are better suited to face-to-face or out-of-class delivery mode.

Identify course learning outcomes

Learning objectives (or learning outcomes) describe the learning that a student is expected to demonstrate from a single class, course or program.

To be effective, the statements should:

use verbs that describe observable and measurable actions that demonstrate the learning and can be assessed;

specify the precise knowledge, skills or attitudes that are targeted

identify the conditions under which students will demonstrate their learning

Finally, always sharing the learning outcomes with your students is best practice.

See our Course Design pressbook for guidance on how to develop learning outcomes.

Determine assessments to measure each outcome

To determine the assessment activities for a course, consider the following question:

• How will students demonstrate the skills, knowledge or attitudes required to succeed in the course? These are directly tied to the learning outcomes identified previously.

With your learning outcomes in mind, determine what activities might serve as evidence that students meet each outcome.

The nature of the assessments will depend on the depth of knowledge or skill required. When simple facts are required, quizzes might be an efficient way of measuring learning. However, when students must use higher-order thinking skills to analyze and evaluate, real-world problems and scenarios are more appropriate.

Examples of assessment activities include:

• problem-solving tasks and scenarios
• models and diagrams
• essays
• research reports
• videos
• reflections (written or in an alternative medium)
• artistic works
• role-plays

Plan all course learning activities

The learning activities include any course activities the students must complete to help them meet the course objectives and goals.

Note: A three-credit course requires at least 10 hours of work per week, including lectures, readings, exams and other assignments.

To avoid including an overwhelming number of readings and lectures in the online environment, determine whether a learning activity is essential or optional. Consider creating a separate “Supplementary Resources & Activities” section in Moodle for the optional activities and direct students to specific resources and activities as appropriate. You can use this tool to help you estimate student workload.

Examples include:

• readings
• attending/watching lectures
• watching other videos
• participating in an online discussion forum
• completing individual or collaborative assignments
• taking quizzes
• participating in in-class group work or other activities
• Hands-on activities, such as data collection or analysis, doing experiments, building or creating original works
• Community activities include participating in a rally, visiting landmarks, interviewing experts, and cataloging or mapping communities (i.e., plants, wildlife, architecture, monuments, etc.)

Determine the sequence and delivery mode for each activity

This final step of the planning process is putting all the pieces together and mapping out what the course will look like.

To create the completed plan for your blended course, complete the following tasks:

1. Group all learning activities and assessments into modules or weeks and determine the sequence of each activity within each module.
2. Determine the delivery mode for each activity and assessment (i.e. in-class or out-of-class). If any activities are to be online, note which Moodle activity you will use and what resources are required to create it online (i.e., record a lecture, enter quiz questions into Moodle, create student groups in Moodle, etc.)

Template

The Blending Your Course by Module template will help you design a blended module for your course.

References

Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing : a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (Complete). Longman.

Garrison, D. R. & Vaughn, N.D. (2007) Blended learning in higher education: Framework, principles, and guidelines. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Stein, J. & Graham, C.R. (2014). Essentials for blended learning: A standards-based guide. New York: Routledge.

Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Pearson.