Usually, when you are asked to design an e-learning course “in real life”, you already have a context, approximate or strict learning objectives, and, definitely, the field of the e-learning course. However, in the study project you have much more freedom: you can choose or imagine any context you like, as long as it is applicable to real life situations. As for almost all design projects, you shall go from the general to the particular: first comes the concept, then – the structure (and here you can consult various models), then – the details. While the detailed work can be divided among the group members, the concept is a subject for collective brainstorming.

CONCEPT

Step 1. Choose the field (or several fields to choose from) in which you are going to give an e-learning course It is important that at least one person in your group is familiar with the field very well. E.g., if you want to give Chinese lessons, be sure that at least one person in the group speaks Chinese.

Step 2. Examine and analyse the existing e-learning courses in the field

Plagiarising is not allowed, however, the best way to learn how to build e-learning environments is to try several of them. Thus you will put yourself in the shoes of your potential students and get information on what is interesting, what is boring, what is helpful, etc. How do you find the existing e-learning courses? Google it! There are thousands of online courses, including free ones, on various topics. Explore and note the tools and the learning paths they use.

Step 3. Define

a. Define the context

Does the course provide supplementary material for a school class? Is it a professional training course for employees of a particular company or a vocational training course? You can invent a background story for the course, or take an existing one – whatever you prefer.

b. Define your learners

Who are your learners? Why are they going to take the course? What are their objectives? What is their age? Do they know something about the subject or they are beginners? What is their level of digital literacy? The answers will influence your decisions concerning the style, the language you use, etc.

c. Define the learning objectives As every course, your e-learning course will have learning objectives. They will serve as good direction arrows in the learning path. Do not forget that you are building a small-scale project. The learning objective of “achieve level C1 in French” will be too high if your target audience has A1. Building such a course of good quality would take you several years.

STRUCTURE

Step 4. Analyse the tools available You have a collection of tools presented on the website, and of course, you are free to explore and introduce more tools. Try to find how the tools can be connected to each other and how they could help the students achieve the learning objectives.

Step 5. Create a draft of the learning path Choose a model you are going to follow and start drafting the learning path basing on the information you got in above steps. You can combine several models if you need, just be sure that your learning path is logical. At this step you can already start writing the course contents (units and lessons).

DESIGN

Step 6. Create the exact plan If you are planning to build the whole website, here you build the website tree – in other words, the detailed map of your website. Make sure that your students will easily find how to go from one point to another – the information should not be presented in a chaotic way. Also, make sure that the people won’t get bored and close the website after several minutes. This is a tough work, however, it is possible to achieve. Try to use the experience of other e-learning platforms and don’t forget the fun; curiosity is also a great human quality to address. One of good models to prevent the loss of interest is Gagne’s Nine events of instruction model.

It is recommended that as soon as you have the exact plan, you create the “skeleton” of your project: create blank pages with titles for every part, then on Step 8 you’ll just have to copy-paste the material and connect the pages by links.

Step 7. Divide the work Now when you have a detailed plan, you can start working. E.g. one will work on the assessment tool, another – on the text and pictures materials, etc. If each of you wants to try all the tools (which is recommended), then change the roles sometimes. For example: for Lesson 1 Mary creates the text, Anna creates the quiz and John finds videos and other supplementary materials. Then for Lesson 2 you change the roles. It is recommended to WRITE DOWN how you divided the roles, thus it would be easy to address the right person in case of any problem with the course. Make sure that your work is aligned: the materials of the lesson and the quiz shall be connected.

Step 8. Assemble the elements When everything is almost ready, you just need to connect it one to another. If you are building a website, you should create/fill pages, buttons and links. They should be working on EVERY page. This part won’t be complicated if you completed Step 6 properly and drew the website tree and/or the course plan.

Step 9. Debug Every member of the group should go through the whole e-learning course as a student, trying every possible button, link or quiz. If something is wrong, e.g. a link doesn’t work or a video doesn’t play – report it to the person who was in charge of this part, and he should fix it. Make sure everyone knows which part is whose.

EVALUATION

Step 10. Try-out and get feedback You will get feedback from your professor and tutor anyway, however, you are always welcome to try it out on others first. Send your ready course to some friends or share it on Facebook. Get feedback from your fellow students and/or friends. Ask them to tell you if there are any things that do not work properly, if they are interested/amused/bored by the course. If you have sufficient time, you would be able to change something in your course structure according to the feedback. You will also have evaluation checklist, which you can consult on PointCarre.