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How to design a course that is attractive to learners

Site: OpenLearn Create
Course: Designing an online course for women learners
Book: How to design a course that is attractive to learners
Printed by: Guest user
Date: Sunday, 19 May 2024, 2:51 PM

Table of contents

1. How to design a course that is attractive to learners

This session begins with an activity that encourages you to think about what makes a course attractive to learners from your own experience. This understanding should also help you to prepared to understand how what you will learn relates to your own experience.

The second activity introduces you to a tool to help you to begin to plan the factors that you should consider when thinking about how to make your course attractive to learners.

Allow about 25 minutes for this session overall.

2. My experience of producing or studying an online course

Make brief notes on one occasion when you have either designed an online course or studied a course, as an individual or team. This could be in a university, a vocational training institute or a training course organised for staff in the organisation you work for or have previously worked. You might also think about situations where you spoke about a course with friends and family.

Here are some questions to get you started:

  1. What was the online course about?
  2. What role did you play in the course (e.g. course leader, facilitator, adviser, learner)?
  3. How was digital technology used in the course (E.g. course material uploaded on platforms, discussion tools, online games, web pages)
  4. What did you like about the course and what did you find particularly challenging?

There are no right or wrong answers to the questions. This is just to help you to reflect on your own experiences. It is important to keep a record of your notes throughout the course, which is why we encouraged you in the welcome message to get a notebook for this course.

Use your notes to complete the next activity in session 2.

3. The learning design wheel

The Open University's Learning Design team have created a word wheel to help shape your planning. The wheel is an interactive image of how to make your course attractive to learners.

In this activity you will review the image. As you do, think about how the ideas reflect your experience of what you have done in the past or can do to attract learners to a course.

Follow the following steps:

Step 1. Click on The learning design wheel, to launch the interactive full screen.

Step 2. Follow the instructions on the right to review the image. There are three instructions for you to toggle the numbers 1, 2 and 3 one at a time. For instance, to toggle 1, click and hold the mouse at the 1 while rotating the wheel. As you do this, make notes of the words that are revealed.

Step 3. For the purpose of this activity, chose three words that you would use to describe what makes a course attractive to learners.  

Step 4. Now returning to your notes from the previous session about your experiences of course design, use the three words you identified in Step 3 to describe what makes a course attractive to learners. 

Step 5. Write up your notes in a notebook for use later in the course. You will find the notes useful in relating your experiences to those of participants in this course during the Live Event.

Get started with Session 3.