‘Blue skies’ storyboards

Iterative design process

Blue skies design at Programme level

Re-design at Programme level

Risk assessment

Design at Activity level

Re-design at Programme level

Critical friends

Refinement of activity design

Specific activity design (alpha)

Implement & review

Blue skies storyboard

Represent diagrammatically how you want your online course to be (best of possible real worlds)

Why?

To articulate the design objectives at the highest level …

…so that decisions at finer grained levels are easier to evaluate

Who for?

Yourselves in the first instance …

… and for your critical friends here today

… students, validation panels, colleagues, etc

•Human Resources

Institutional rationales…

are highly contextualised and institutionally specific Flexibility of provision

E.g. student recruitment and retention , opening facilities for longer hours, etc

Supporting diversity E.g. online support services

Enhancing the campus experienceE.g. supporting geographically dispersed students, e-portfolios

to support field work, technology rich classrooms that support interaction in large cohorts

Operating in a global context E.g. marketing courses globally, competitive advantage,

developing global citizens with e-literacy skills Efficiency

E.g. free up staff time, or at least make working locations and hours more flexible, make more effective use of contact time with students

Maintaining course quality in response to increasing cohort sizes E.g. learning objects for working through difficult topics extension activities for subsets of students additional opportunities for feedback preparing students for practical work creating opportunities for dialogue in small groups promoting interactivity in class

Engaging students out of class, E.gdiscussions which structure and pace study between face to

face sessionsdiscussion boards for sharing critical incident analyses during

placements interactive tasks for students to use outside of class time multiple choice questions to help students judge their progress

prior to examinations

Local/course level rationales

Developing professional skillsonline collaborative work as a key skill for modern business

practice using spreadsheet tasks to develop computer literacy in

accountancy promoting interprofessional learning in nursing

Educational rationales enhancing associative, constructivist or situative learning

Local/course level rationales 2