5 tips for programme-level learning design
When people talk and share about learning design, the focus tends to be on course or module level design. In the context of a university degree this would be one component of a much bigger experience of teaching and study.
Now obviously programme design shares some similarities with module or course design but it diverges in significant ways too. Programme design involves the blueprinting of a much more significant experience that involves or impacts upon more people.
It’s complex and is influenced not simply by the views, philosophies and aspirations of the individuals who are most responsible for it, but also a range of what L. Dee Fink referred to as important situational factors.
So in the UK this would include things like Level Descriptors and Subject Benchmark Statements as well Professional Regulatory and Statutory Body (PRSB) requirements where applicable.
There’s also the current and future needs of related sectors, industry and society. But the things that influence design aren’t just external to an institution, there are a number of expectations, needs, requirements within institutions that programme design needs to be cognisant of.
It’s fair to say this is not a blank-page kind of design process, but one in which there are lots of parameters and constraints.
There are many pitfalls when it comes to programme design too. One obvious one is because of the process, policy and procedure wrapped up in it - it becomes an administrative exercise not a design exercise. Another common one, due to some problem or another in relation to design, is a programme that lacks cohesion, is disjointed and disunified.
I don’t encounter much writing on programme level design and so I thought it might be useful to share some tips, which in no way speak to the totality of programme design, but highlight ways of approaching it, which I hope help designers, educators and those involved in this complicated endeavour.
1. Adopt a team-based design approach from the start
For some people this will be stating the bleeding obvious, but it’s amazing how often programme design and all the work wrapped up in is the activity of a select few. Programmes involve many people and therefore a shared contribution to developing the fundamentals and foundations of a programme can really help with achieving a cohesive programme and shared understanding.
Too often programmes are not connected, unified pathways but a collection of modules with some loose and unclear relationship to each other. Getting a team together to work on programme design at an early stage is therefore critical. The people working on a programme need to help shape and understand things like the purpose, USP, underpinning educational philosophy, end goals and problems it’s seeking to address.
There are a number of approaches from intensive consecutive whole-day sessions to shorter series of sessions. Most approaches acknowledge that time is hard to find, but if you don’t make the time especially in the early foundational stages of the design process then you’re likely to store up problems for later.
2. Think about and distill the ‘why” of the programme
What I hear from those who approve programmes in universities is that frequently they reject proposals because they seem like they’ve been dreamt up on a whim and there’s no clear articulation of why this programme is needed or is going to be valuable.
That’s not just an issue in terms of a proposal being approved but also for the design too. It’s the equivalent of a sports team who self-evidently has no plan, no clear approach or tactics.
Deeply considering, thinking, discussing and then being able to articulate things like the overarching purpose of a programme, what it’s aiming to achieve, why it’s needed, what problems it’s trying to solve, what big questions it’s exploring or tackling, what makes it distinctive - will help enormously.
If you can distill these and have a shared understanding of them they can act as pillars and key reference points for the many, many decisions you need to make subsequently and the significant work that follows.
3. Forget about learning outcomes and focus on what you want people to learn
Ok, so some people reading that will be having palpitations, or be thoroughly confused, but allow me to explain. Too often programme design is simply administration - lots of paperwork, forms and constructing things in a certain way to tick certain boxes.
If we’re honest, learning outcomes have become an administrative writing task with their own syntax and structure which can sometimes rob them of any meaning, significance and relationship to what we hope people learn and get out of programmes.
My advice is to forget about the idiom of learning outcomes and do some serious thoughtwork and discussion about what you want people to learn free from the shackles of one specific means of articulating that. Ultimately, you will have to write learning outcomes in that style, but don’t start there or be preoccupied by that.
Think about how you might articulate what you want people to learn in a different way - in a way that is useful to the team designing the programme and in a way that will be ultimately more meaningful and understandable to learners not versed in ciphers of higher education.
4. Find out as much as you can about your learners or audience
When I think about this I’m constantly reminded of this great quote:
“Students do not come into our courses as blank slates, but rather with knowledge gained in other courses, through daily life. This knowledge consists of an amalgam of facts, concepts, models, perceptions, beliefs, values and attitudes, some of which are inaccurate, insufficient for the learning requirements of the course or simply inappropriate for the context.”
From “How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching” by Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett & Marie K. Norman,
When we design anything around learning then we need to consider what the learner might bring into that experience and how it might influence various aspects of the programme design and realisation of it.
There are many dimensions of thinking about audience and learners but if we were to focus on learning then prior knowledge or understanding is absolutely critical. How might we try to gain insights to inform and ground the design? This is not easy and is an area where resourcefulness is needed.
Might you reach out and speak with other educators teaching similar programmes at the same level? Might you reach out to educators that teach students the types of subjects that typically lead on to your programme and level of study? What about prospective students?
Building the best picture you can that’s grounded on something more than assumptions will help with things like the construction of the sequences of modules, what curriculum model you might look to adopt or adapt and what support and interaction you might wrap around it.
5. Documenting and the representation of your designs is critical don’t neglect it
When you’re designing something as complex as a programme of study that has many different layers to it, it’s so important that designs and the experience is represented. Visual mapping and diagramming are very useful techniques to understand the sequencing, journey and the key inter-relationships.
Technologies such as Miro can act as a canvas to realise the design, develop a sequence of modules, draw out pathways and journeys and map desired skills progression and knowledge acquisition. They also allow you to work collaboratively and asynchronously as a team on the design.
Other important layers to design representations include where practice, performance or application will take place, where feedback dialogues and interactions take place and where checks for understanding, formative and summative assessments are placed.
One of the important things to consider here is the experience of the learner who will inhabit and progress through this experience when it’s made manifest. This is where borrowing and adapting techniques from UX design like journey mapping might come in useful as a complimentary way of representing your design.
This serves a slightly different aim than the sequencing and mapping of a programme experience and it might help you to put yourselves in the shoes of learners in the absence of them being able to give direct insight into that themselves.
We need effective design to meet the challenge of increasingly complex programmes
Whether you’re designing an online programme, a blended programme or a programme that is taught in-person, or in fact redesigning a programme these tips should help you in what is a complex process.
The effective design of programmes is so critical because if you get the fundamentals and foundations wrong you’ll be building on sand. There are too many instances of programmes that are disjointed collections of modules and in which holistic thought of how learning happens, develops and is supported through teaching, activities and assessment is sorely lacking.
Programmes are developing in complexity, whether that be through use of technology or a greater diversity of people undertaking them or through built-in choice, flexibility, different entry and exit points and the need to offer whole and disaggregated experiences.
So approaches to design that provide the best platform for cohesive, coherent experiences that create the best conditions for learning to result will only become more and more important in the years to come. How we approach design will be critical to meeting that growing challenge.
