Texas Tech University

From the ID Team

Anita Nunez

Anita Nuñez

Module Design Plans

This is the second article in a series on creating a quality online course. See the May 2015 edition of From Anywhere for the first article entitled Begin with a Course Design Plan.

The next step in the design phase is to create your module design plans. Just as you created your course design plan, you must remember to create your module design plans without consideration of the technology that will be used. Designing your modules may take at least 30% of the time needed to fully complete your online course.

As part of your course design plan, you determined how best to "chunk" or "modularize" your course content. Module titles and descriptions including main concepts covered in each of your modules should be on the course design plan. The course objectives that align with each of your modules should also be included on the course design plan.

Taking into consideration the module concepts and sequence laid out in your course design plan, create each module design plan. You will examine the course objectives that align with each module and compose module objectives from those. You usually have 1 to 3 course objectives for each module and compose 1 to 5 module objectives. Your module objectives will be more specific than the course objectives but will also be written from the perspective of what the student will be able to do upon completion of the module. You will then list your assessment strategies for each of your module objectives. These strategies should describe how you will teach, what opportunities you will give students to demonstrate their knowledge and how you will assess the level of course objective(s) your students have achieved. Finally, you will list each task you will assign for your students and the module objective to which it addresses.

Though you may think you are wasting time while in the design phase of your new online course, know that time spent on constructing a good design for your course will save a lot of time in the development phase. Look for future articles as we move through the design-development-manage online course process.

For assistance with online course design plan, or any other help with your online course, please contact the Instructional Design team at elearning.id@ttu.edu or call 806-742-7227.