Who came first? The teacher or the learner? It is an interesting question to ask yourself when you have plans for developing course materials. Because: who do you want to help? The teacher in bringing his or her message forward? Or the learner in learning new things?

As instructional designers and educational scientists at Elevate we aim to develop appealing courses, to empower health professionals. Within this process, the challenge is to keep all stakeholders involved. With stakeholders I mean the target audience, but also: the content experts delivering the course content. What are their aims? What are their needs? What is their context? And (how) do they match?

A course development process is therefore more than defining learning objectives and creating inspiring learning activities. It is a close collaboration (‘co-creation’) between all stakeholders. Within the H2020 Integrity project, we work together with many partners from different countries, with different backgrounds, contexts and focus areas. We share the overall project aim: a solid basis to start from. But apart from that we have strived for including the nuances, opinions and ideas from all partners in the SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses) that are being created. But how to start such a process?

Mark Twain provides us with the simple advice: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” His words do not only count for learning as a process itself, but also illustrate nicely the process of how to come to a learning solution. So when we start the course development process we do exactly this. We have split up the overwhelming task into smaller ones. The first task is the course design.

For the first SPOC, the content experts from Utrecht University defined the learning objectives: what should the target audience be able to do ‘better’ after following the SPOC? Instructional designers from Elevate provided didactical advice on these objectives and the other project partners provided their thoughts on the content. The next step was creating a structure: in what order should the target audience go through the course topics? With both the objectives and the structure clear in mind, it was time to think of suitable learning methods. Instructional designers and content experts collaborated to create learning activities that matched the objectives. Added to this blueprint were time indications for the learners, ideas for online interactivity, ideas for existing resources to be added and the fine-tuned titles for each activity. With that, the course design was ready! Time to move on to the next phase: the actual development of the course content. We started with… No, I won’t explain this phase step by step again, I think you got the picture by now. By splitting up the activities, we have built the SPOC. Starting with the fundaments and adding new ‘layers’, one step at a time.

Now let me get back to my previous point: including all stakeholders. I already mentioned briefly that the first SPOC was started up by the content experts from Utrecht University in close collaboration with Elevate. However, the other relevant project partners were of course involved as well. Different video calls took place and emails were exchanged by the different partners to work towards an agreement on every step within the process. Be aware, this approach is time consuming: ideas, aims and needs have to be aligned, again and again (‘iteration’). So-called darlings need to be killed (or saved!), and more than once, reaching consensus sometimes can be a type of top-class sport. However, this is time well spent. It leads to a course in which the overall project aim is in balance with all nuances brought forth by the different partners involved.

The first SPOC is currently in its pilot stage: a small part of the target audience is interacting with the course materials for the first time. We will closely monitor and evaluate their experiences, in order to further align the course to their needs. Because a course development process never ends at the launch of the course. It is a time in which the ‘real-world’ effect of a course can be examined: do the research and detailed development activities have the effects we aimed for? It is a time in which we ask ourselves: did we ‘help’ both the teacher and the learner forward?

In our next blog, we will reflect on this pilot phase and the first evaluation results.