The courses in Cluster 4 may only be taken by students registered for the postgraduate diploma; these courses cannot be taken as stand-alone short courses. Additionally, Cluster 4 courses must be the final courses in a PGDip candidate’s programme, and must be taken in order.
Learning Design Intervention: Design and Development
Course overview
An important role of learning designers is to design a learning intervention for learning within the framework of design-based research, drawing on the principles of equity and social justice in order to enhance student learning and success. Participants will be guided in designing, developing and justifying their own learning intervention for their specific context. They will be revisiting the frameworks and models introduced in the PGDip courses and critically analyse and select an appropriate framework for their context and purpose.
Learning objectives
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Identify the learning or teaching problem or opportunity;
- Explore the student, teacher and other stakeholder needs, and brainstorm the possible content and/or learning experience for a specific context referring to any previous documentation or surveys already conducted;
- Brainstorm ideas and develop a prototype of a learning design intervention that would take students about 1 hour to complete;
- Develop the learning design intervention using suitable platforms/tools and pilot;
- Justify the learning design choices;
- Demonstrate a mindset of a learning designer that is characterised by curiosity, creative confidence/competence, collaboration, ethics (of care) and a spirit of experimentation; and
- Show familiarity with the professional perspectives and challenges of multiple stakeholders including educators/trainers, managers, students/participants and materials developers.
Learning Design Intervention: Evaluation
Course overview
Evaluating the quality of online and blended learning is an important but complex task. This course will introduce participants to a range of quality assurance mechanisms, such as rubrics, benchmarking, learning analytics and user testing. Participants will choose to evaluate an existing blended or online course or an online facilitation process of their choice as part of this module.
Learning objectives
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Design and implement evaluation and quality assurance methodologies for blended and online courses including Design Based Research;
- Engage with global and African research to inform the evaluation and quality assurance of online learning and teaching in specific contexts to make informed choices;
- Engage in related debates in the field of learning design; and
- Identify opportunities for improvement of practice and research.
Learning Design Intervention: Showcasing Critical Reflexivity
Course overview
All tasks and activities completed by participants in the courses offered through BOLD lead towards the development of an online portfolio (eportfolio) that should showcase a learning designers skillset, their teaching and learning philosophies, values, and theoretical knowledge. A reflective essay, with illustrative examples, is required for participants to showcase their ability to research and reflect on their own practice as critically reflective practitioners and/or scholars.
Learning objectives
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Reveal embeddedness in a local, national and/or an international community of practice of learning designers;
- Show familiarity with the professional perspectives and challenges of multiple stakeholders including educators/trainers, managers, students/participants and materials developers;
- Become a critical reflective practitioner (critical reflect on their development as blended and online learning designers through this programme);
- Develop an ePortfolio; and
- Understand the landscape of learning design as a research field, identify current trends and issues and apply a range of theoretical frameworks to LD research (e.g. Design Based Research).