Reflections on course development
In the Digital Skills Team, a significant part of our job is to develop courses and webinars. I mainly develop courses in Microsoft Excel, the powerful spreadsheet application that enables people to quickly organise and format data and perform calculations. I find course development to be one of the most enjoyable parts of my job. It can also be very challenging. It’s enjoyable because researching the topics is very interesting, and as there is significant demand for the chosen topics, time spent developing the courses is time well spent. In addition, from experience, there’ll likely be many appreciative staff and student sign-ups for the courses.
Rewards and Challenges
As with most course development, some aspects of developing Excel courses are rewarding and relatively straightforward, and some aspects are very demanding of time, energy and powers of concentration.
The relatively straightforward part is understanding how the software operates and how to use intermediate-level functions to carry out calculations or extract data. With a few exceptions, the subject matter is generally precise and specific.
The more challenging aspects of course development include explaining technical and complex concepts in clear, accessible language. It’s also important to acquire enough background knowledge to confidently answer anticipated questions on advanced Excel. In addition, it’s necessary to find specific sources of information that get to the bottom line without long-winded preambles, and to work out the best running order for the topics.
Points of debate
There is generally a consensus from most high-quality documentation and video sources on how to use many of the Excel features, such as subtotalling, lookup and logical functions, and PivotTables. Fortunately, I can then confidently recommend these functions and features to course participants.
However, occasionally, the guidance on how to use some Excel features is very theoretical, and it is worth providing hints and tips to help the user achieve a practical solution. One example of this is the debate over the use of the pie chart (or, as the French say, un camembert) in data visualisations. Some experts recommend avoiding the use of pie charts. However, in reality, because of their visual simplicity and circular shape, which psychologically symbolises unity and completion, they are a popular means of getting information across. They have been around for a couple of centuries and can often be seen in everyday situations such as marketing and mass media. My aim when developing the course was to advise on appropriate usage and how to make the best of your pie chart, including using clear labels with the percentage of each proportion directly on the slice.
After going through much thought and many modifications, there can be a great sense of achievement from creating a course, and further fulfilment derives from teaching it to enthusiastic and interested staff and students.
Browse our Digital Skills Programme
To find out more on charts, functions and many other aspects of Microsoft Excel and other Digital Skills you can sign up for the our courses and webinars via our Digital Skills Programme webpage.
Article written by Christina Hussell
