1. Think about University Teachers to be ‘Craftspeople’!
Work in progress
1. Think about University Teachers to be ‘Craftspeople’!
This website aims to support university teacher designers in (re)designing their course in a blended learning course.
The teacher designer aims to develop an effective and efficient learning process(es) and a supportive environment that are valued, liked, and feasible for students and teachers.
The teacher designer gathers and analyses additional relevant pedagogical and disciplinary information to address the identified problems and needs of students and teachers, allowing for the ideation, formulation, and selection of appropriate pedagogical and disciplinary options for the course.
This information is structured with the help of various design tools:
The Pedagogical Concept outlines the educational vision that guides the design of your course.
The Learning Environment is a systematic description of the foundation of your course.
Your Quality Criteria and Requirements keep you on track with your course design.
A Route Map shows the essence of the designed learning processes.
Your pedagogical approach is described in detail in the Blueprint.
Example of active learning
Meet the Theory
1. The teacher is a craft person in course design to design Blended Learning
2. Modern Higher Education (MHE)
3. Design Principles and the IT Options in Higher Education (HE)
4. Course Design in Modern Higher Education: A New Approach
5. The description of the 8-stage course design and development process
6. Exercising practical application of the design features
7. You can follow the Moodle Course: How do you redesign your course to a Blended Learning course?
Illustration of the pedagogical concept of modern higher education
Elements of the Learning Environment
Route Map clarifies the design of the learning process(es)
The Blueprint describes the selected design details of the actual course program
Quality Criteria and Requirements
Divergent and convergent thinking are necessary in course design
Eight Design Principles for Modern Higher Education
Meet the practice
You can follow the Moodle Course: How do you redesign your course to a Blended Learning course?
E-course IT options Blended Learning
Blended learning website: shop for ideas
The University Teacher Designers master the indispensable yet old-fashioned skills for instructional design as described by Dick and Carey (1993), Valcke (2007), Earl (1987) and Nedermeijer(2022 – Chapter 6).
Below, I specify the additional skills of the teacher designer.
- Think up the learning process for students.
- Formulate learning objectives, adapt through progressive insight.
- Collect and structure the discipline’s subject matter to study in the course.
- Study the users’ perspective of the involved students and teachers, which might influence the course design.
- Gain insights into the pedagogical possibilities of learning methods and materials and understand how to create these materials.
- Understand and apply evidence-based (or informed) pedagogical options in new teaching-learning situations.
- Identify and describe the different elements of the learning environment and assess their coherence, also known as constructive alignment.
- Follow the stages of the course design and development process.
The website also introduces a new course design process for university teacher designers
The relevant and valuable design features in technical design, complex problem-solving, creativity, design thinking and course design are analysed to improve the existing course DD processes.
You can find the results of this analysis in Part 4 of my book:
Jan Nedermeijer (2023) Evidence-based blended and online learning. Course Design for University Teachers.
These features make the Basic Course Design and Development process more effective and practicable for university teachers.
6-Phases of the Basic Course Design and Development Process for University Teacher Designers
This process should be adapted to the specific context of different design situations. For example, there are three different course DD processes. You can find a more detailed description of the 8-stage Course Design and Development Process here.