Introduction

This chapter is concerned with programme design and development, which involves spending time thinking about learners and their needs, the learning environment and learning processes. These are some of the basic ideas that inform the programme or course design and development process:

An important concept is that of ‘constructive alignment’ (Biggs, 2011), which involves ensuring that the learning, teaching and assessment activities are directly aligned to the learning outcome(s) of the course or module. When designing a course, whether delivered face to face through blended learning or online, keep checking that the learning and teaching activities plus the assessment methods will enable students to achieve and demonstrate the intended learning outcomes.

My personal view is that time spent on the design and development process is essential if the programme or event is to be successful. Spending time on the design process helps you to think through the needs of the learners and their likely expectations, enables you to think through the whole event, and helps prevent you from making basic errors. Going into a training event with a well prepared programme and tested learning activities also helps to provide a professional impression, which gives confidence to the trainer or facilitator and learners. Finally, in the unlikely event that you are unable to deliver an event, then if a colleague is asked to stand in you will be able to give her or him sufficient information and learning resources to help ensure that it is successful.

This chapter is divided into the following sections: thinking about participants, basic design principles, levels of learning, basic design structure, design of individual learning activities, finding and using learning resources, reviewing the programme design, and marketing and promotion. Chapter 8 considers how to design face-to-face sessions, flipped classroom sessions, blended learning courses and online courses. The subject of evaluation of the impact of learning and teaching interventions is presented in Chapter 10.