Whether you are building a blended course from scratch or looking to blend elements of existing in-person and online courses, course design is key. Starting with your intended learning outcomes, consider how instructional strategies, learning activities, and assessments will come together to support student learning, and how you will use a blend of in-person and online elements to create an integrated learning experience for your students.
If you are working from an existing in-person course, it can be tempting to try and directly translate the existing content, activities, and assessments into online modes of delivery (or vice versa). While we encourage you to re-use as much of any existing courseware as possible, please note that, sometimes, a direct translation or replication across modes is not feasible. Likewise, incorporating a blend into an existing in-person course is not as simple as just adding online elements (and thereby creating a ‘course-and-a-half’ with more work for both you and your students) (McGee & Reis, 2012).
- Before continuing, please take a few moments to describe your course in Section 2 – Course Design: Teaching Context of the worksheet. If you are not sure which blended approach or model you will use, do not fret! You can return to this after considering your course components and how you will deliver and integrate them across modalities.
In the slideshow below, we outline the basic steps of course design. As you review these steps, we encourage you to reflect your blended course (re)design, and note down some key considerations in the provided worksheet. Take time to carefully consider which mode(s) of delivery will best meet each of your course components, how, and why.