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Learning-centered course design

I need your help.  I’m trying to apply the principles of learning-centeredness (pdf) to the design of an online course by comparing two approaches.  What do you think?  Did I leave anything out?  Is there anything you’d change? 

Comparing two approaches

A teaching-centered approach to course design

  • course content comes mainly from a content expert and facilitator
  • the role of the course designer is to develop and organize course content and evaluation
  • course content comes from educational contexts (i.e. textbooks)
  • the role of the instructor is to deliver information and evaluate learning
  • the course is structured by topic
  • key learning strategies include: readings, watching videos, listening to audio recordings and independent learning
  • evaluation is designed to monitor learning (teaching and assessment are separate)

A learning-centered approach to course design

  • course content comes mainly from learners who find and share resources
  • the role of the course designer is to define the learning goals and design the learning environment
  • course content comes from real-world contexts
  • the instructor is a coach and facilitator (instructor and learners usually evaluate learning together)
  • the course is structured by learning objectives
  • key learning strategies include collaborative learning, community service learning, cooperative learning, and asynchronous and synchronous discussion
  • evaluation is designed to help students master the outcomes by diagnosing areas for improvement (teaching and assessment are intertwined)

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5 responses to “Learning-centered course design”

  1. Lorraine Mockford Avatar
    Lorraine Mockford

    Carolyn, I think you have nailed it! This is where we need to go with course design for alternate delivery. I am finding, more and more, that that “regular” courses we develop still encourage the dependency upon “teacher”. We have to move beyond that! Long live Learnching!

    Lorraine
    PS. I, the keeper of the keys, just had to break into my room at GTS while the car is mired axel deep in mud. We thought driving it to the window to climb on was a good idea. We were wrong.

    Reply
  2. randommind Avatar
    randommind

    Ha! Pictures! Send pictures!

    And learnching (teaching + learning) is the perfect word. We’re all teachers & we’re all learners. Now, how do we learnch online? Hmmmm …

    Reply
  3. Stephen Parsons Avatar
    Stephen Parsons

    Carolyn – that’s a great start!

    If I could make a couple of suggestions:

    I have seen this list before – probably in Claudine L./Mike H./Cathy M’s CCEDP course on the Learning Centred College. My concern about it then (and now) is that the paradigms seem a little focused on the university model and how those in that kind of environment might employ LC principles. Because we are a college, our methodologies might reflect the more practical application of knowledge as much as possible. Accordingly, I would emphasize the role of the instructor as facilitator of “learning process”, not of knowledge content; and the concept of cognitive apprenticeship – scaffolding with basic “getting started” ideas and issues, and then fading to a mentor role. I would also love to see the learning activities moving from “listening to lectures” to “modelling competencies, simulation, application and practice in situations as close to real-world as possible.” This would get faculty thinking about project- and problem-based learning.

    Accordingly, if you were thinking to put together a workshop on this, I’d ensure the workshop activities modelled those practices – scaffold with basic ideas and problem statements; then support the learners design of learning and let them solve those problems; also allowing peers to evaluate each other’s solutions in line with the anticipated competencies.

    I might suggest one other strategy that is important in the role of facilitator – that of helping students to bridge learning from one concept to another/ making connections between and among their learning. They may do this both by the structure of learning and directly by getting students to reflect on and articulate their learning in plenary or peer group discussions. Those discussions could just as easily be in blogs or ePortfolio tools as in face-to-face discussion. But the facilitator needs to be aware of what he/she is looking for in that discussion and how to capitalize on the “teachable” moment.

    Finally, we have heard a great deal about collaborative learning – I think it may be time to consider collaborative teaching. When we can move to a more integrated, project-based learning model, it would be beneficial to consider teaching teams who evaluate and support specific learning competencies: technical competencies; essential skills; group dynamics as areas of teaching excellence.

    Thanks a lot for your excellent work on this – wish we could clone you a few times and get you in front of even more faculty!

    S.

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  4. randommind Avatar
    randommind

    Stephen, what great comments!! I especially liked the idea of designing scaffolding & fading. In a way, a good course designer is like a gardener — planting seeds and tending to what grows.

    Perhaps the most vexing issue with learning-centered design is that, while it may seem counter-intuitive, developing courses this way is hard work! We don’t have a lot of formal experience to draw on. We don’t have a lot of models.

    It’s interesting that you should mention the workshop. That’s exactly what I’m up to & you’ve given me a great challenge. Now I’m asking myself what a workshop on course design would look like if it were designed using a learning-centered approach.

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  5. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    You’ve done a great job with this Carolyn and I agree with you and the comments received. It is harder to develop learning-centred course because you have to develop them with the learners. The scaffolding and fading approach works well, I know that from experience. I also know that in the end the learning experience is much richer for both the learners and the facilitator because so much more has been brought to it. I love what you have done with the comparison of the two approaches.

    Any workshop that you design using a learning-centred approach should include an opportunity for the attendees to bring something to the table – whether that be experiences, opinions (both pro and con), attitudes, knowledge or anything else that would contribute to the workshop experience.

    What you need to do to allow that to happen though is have an initial scaffold in place so that you cane fade into the background as the learners discover the advantages and joys of learning-centred course design.

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