The Learning technology team at Holyrood has been looking very closely at ABC curriculum design. With the University’s own Elder workshops being only run a limited number of times a year, earning Techs throughout the college have been looking for shorter, more course-based alternatives that could be offered at a school level. One of the alternatives was ABC curriculum design, a card based story boarding method developed by colleagues at UCL.

We all would like digitally rich, flexible courses attuned to students’ expectations, but sometimes find it hard to get the design skills, technology knowledge and above all time to sit down as a team and re-design a course. In order to do this, ABC offers a short story board approach to maximise pace, engagement and collaboration. Using pre-printed cards, the team can sequence learning activities and assessments throughout the course. This provides a  visual overview of the learner experience, externalising the course structure therefore making it immediately discussable by the team.

The ABC workshop is organised in a very structured and time-conscious manner. Most of the 90 minutes is spent on group activity but it starts with a brief presentation introducing the toolkit elements and their pedagogical background. The first task for the teams developing either a module or a programme is to agree on a tweet size description (strapline, unique selling point, value proposition etc.) of the
module/programme and write it on the workshop graph sheet. The participants then draw the rough “shape” of their programme (as they envisage it initially) as represented by learning types on a spider graph (e.g. how much practice, or collaboration) and the envisaged blend of face-to-face and online.

Next the team plan the distribution of each learning type by sequencing the postcard-sized cards along the timeline of the module, represented by a large A1 sized paper ‘canvas’. Often activity sequences are repeated and the course is usually represented by two or three patterns of activity. With this outline agreed by the group participants turn over the cards. On the back of each card is a list of online and  conventional activities associated with each learning type and the team can pick (by ticking) from this list or write in their own.

Participants then look for opportunities for formative and summative assessment.

If you’re interested in using this method to design or redesign a blended learning course, please get in touch and Chris and I can discuss holding a workshop for you.

More information on ABC course design is available here

ABC Learning Design / Holyrood Campus Learning Technology by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0