• Designing learning activities
  • Teaching guidance
  • Teaching practices

Learning activities need to align with their assessment, with the learning outcomes for the course/program overall, and with the students’ needs at this stage of their learning.

Planning learning activities

Lesson planning.

When planning learning activities, you should consider the types of activities that students will need to engage in to achieve and demonstrate the intended learning outcome/s. The activities should provide experiences that will enable students to engage, practice and gain feedback on specific outcome/s.

Some questions to think about when designing the learning activities:

  • What would motivate your students to do these activities?
  • What do students need to hear, read, or see to understand the topic?
  • How can I engage students in the topic?
  • What are some relevant real-life examples, analogies, or situations that can help students explore the topic?
  • What will students need to do to practice and demonstrate knowledge of the topic?

Diana Laurillard (2012) classified learning activities into six types: acquisition, inquiry discussion, practice, collaboration and production.

Laurillard, Diana. (2012). Teaching as a design science . In Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group . Routledge.

Robert Gagne proposed a nine-step process called the events of instruction, which is useful for planning the sequence of your lesson.

Designing learning activities

Source: Lesson planning , Singapore Management University Centre for Teaching Excellence.

A lesson plan contains the details of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during a class.

A successful lesson:

  • considers the social, physical, personal, and emotional needs of the student
  • is aligned with the graduate attributes of the institute where the course is being taught
  • has clear and well-defined learning outcomes
  • has a sequence of learning activities that help students master the proposed learning outcomes
  • provides students with the ability to be actively involved in the session
  • promote creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration in the classroom 
  • includes formative assessments to check for student understanding
  • enables educators to collect data about the learning process and learning experience of the students. 

Before the class

  • Identify graduate attributes
  • Identify learning outcomes
  • Plan the learning activities
  • Plan to assess student understanding
  • Create a realistic time plan
  • Plan for lesson closure.

During the class

  • Share the plan with students
  • Effectively implement the plan
  • Try to keep to the proposed time plan
  • Try to collect data.

After the class

  • Analyse collected data
  • Reflect on what worked and what didn’t
  • Redesign the lesson and the lesson plan.
  • Planning for learning
  • Active learning
  • Inclusive practice
  • Enhancing teaching

 Ready to Teach Week

Twice a year, ITaLI puts together a program of online and in-person activities designed to help you prepare course materials for the upcoming semester.

   Resources

  • Developing learning outcomes/objectives
  • Designing assessment
  • Principles of learning

ITaLI offers personalised support services across various areas including planning and designing learning activities.

  • Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation >
  • Course Development >
  • Design Your Course >

Designing Activities

Determining learning experiences for students to develop skills, actively construct knowledge and deepen understanding.

On this page:

Importance of activities.

Activities are the experiences that allow students to achieve learning outcomes. These may consist of readings, lectures, group work, labs or projects to name a few. While situations and learning outcomes are unique, there are best practices that have proven to be more effective across contexts.

Active Learning

·       improves critical thinking skills

·       increases retention and transfer of new information

·       increases motivation

·       improves interpersonal skills

·       decreases course failure

·       provides practice and feedback

For further evidence please see  active learning’s effectiveness.

Choosing Activities

Build in active learning.

On the teaching methods  page you will find student-centered teaching methods that are inherently more active than lecturing.

Often, there are concerns about difficulty of implementing active learning in large courses or with limited support. We address several of these concerns here:

Aligning Activities

The chart below offers a variety of suggested activities that can support learning outcomes.

  • Activity groupings are a starting point and many can be used in combination and in different categories. For example, small group work may have a discussion component built in.
  • Activities can be adapted to meet a variety of learning outcomes depending on what students do in the activity. To adapt an activity, first choose your learning outcome, and then choose an activity to help students achieve the learning outcome. To ensure alignment, refer to either  Bloom’s Taxonomy or Fink’s Taxonomy  to make sure the verb (what students are doing) matches the category your learning outcome is in. For example, a discussion board activity may ask students to create, analyze or explain their understanding of a topic.

Further information about these activities is in the Build section of course development.

Choose Your Activities

Use the  Couse Design Template to determine the activities that will support your learning outcomes and assessments.

  • A. The teaching methods you’ve chosen for each learning outcome.
  • B. Your learning outcomes, and whether the activity will support student growth in this outcome. Refer to the verb lists for Bloom’s Taxonomy or Fink’s Taxonomy to ensure alignment.
  • C. Choosing student-centered activities that promote active learning when appropriate.

After choosing your activities, you have now completed the design phase of course development. Next, you will begin building the elements of your course.

Additional resources

Overview of activities that encourage active learning.

Additional active learning techniques and examples to consider integrating into your course design.

Further active learning examples in higher education.

Active learning examples and directions.

SUNY OSCQR – Importance of activities to develop higher order thinking and encourage real world applications.

For further information about active learning, see the following readings.

  • Ambrose, S. A. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Bonwell, C. C., Eison, J. A. (1991). Active learning: creating excitement in the classroom. The George Washington University, ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education. Washington, D.C.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education. Retrieved from Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED336049
  • Darby, F. and Lang, J. (2019) Small teaching online: apply learning science in online courses. Josey-Bass/Wiley.
  • Lang, J. (2016). Small teaching: everyday lessons from the science of learning. Josey-Bass/Wiley.
  • McGuire, S. (2015). Teach students how to learn: strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation. Stylus Publishing, LLC.
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Learning activity design

Learning activities need to be aligned with learning outcomes and assessment to provide students with opportunities to develop relevant and appropriate skills, knowledge, values, and attitudes.

The importance of learning activities

Learning activities play an important role in student learning and engagement. Students benefit from the opportunity to reflect upon their learning and to ascertain progression towards outcomes.

The teacher's fundamental task is to get students to engage in learning activities that are likely to result in achieving [the intended learning] outcomes. It is helpful to remember that what the student does is actually more important than what the teacher does. (Schuell, 1986, p.429)

Learning activities should:

  • align to outcomes and assessment
  • engage students in active learning
  • facilitate the practice of core skills prior to assessment
  • provide feedback on student progress towards outcomes
  • be accessible for all students.

Types of learning activities

Diana Laurillard's Conversational Framework (2012) identified six types of learning activities.

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Source: Optimising blended and online learning , Diana Laurillard Professor of Learning with Digital Technology, UCL Knowledge Lab

There are different techniques to embed learning. Your strategies might be different depending on what you're teaching or learner preferences.

Acquisition

Learning through acquisition is when teachers engage students with theories, concepts, and ideas.

For example:

  • reading books, journal articles, or websites
  • attending face-to-face presentations, or synchronous lectures/tutorials
  • watching videos, demonstrations, animations, or
  • listening to podcasts or lecture recordings.

Students are supported and guided by teachers to explore and compare theories, concepts, and ideas to develop their own conceptual understanding.

  • research concepts, theories, or events
  • explore and analyse data
  • compare different ideas to critique practice
  • formulate solutions to problems
  • fieldwork, work-integrated learning, and placements

Students use their emerging conceptual understanding to put theory into practice, and utilise feedback to amend their actions and understanding.

  • test solutions to problems
  • simulations

Students produce an output to represent their conceptual understanding. The intention of production is to consolidate learning through the process of producing an output.

  • ePortfolios
  • digital posters
  • video and audio presentations
  • written texts
  • infographics and concept maps
  • blogs, journals, and wikis

Students engage with their peers and teacher to articulate and share their ideas and questions. Through discussion, students are able to enhance their conceptual understanding and generate more questions and ideas.

  • think-pair-share
  • in-class or online synchronous discussions
  • online asynchronous discussions

Collaboration

Students work with their peers to address a problem or to complete an output. Collaboration often involves discussion and production.

  • jigsaw group activities
  • project-based work
  • team problem solving
  • collaborative problem solving
  • peer feedback

Laurillard, Diana. (2012). Teaching as a design science . In Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group . Routledge.

What are the six learning types?

For more information on this framework and the different types of learning activities, please watch the following video:

Learning activity ideas

For some great ideas and suggested digital learning activities, see the NSW Department of Education website.

Explore learning activities

Planning for teaching

After you have designed your learning activities, it's time to start planning for your teaching.

Start planning

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How to design unforgettable class activities that help students learn better

Jonathan Sim shares teaching techniques designed to pique the emotions as a way to lodge key lessons more firmly in students’ memories

Jonathan Sim's avatar

Jonathan Sim

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A problematic trend I notice when conversing with students is how many of them struggle to remember what they did in modules from previous semesters.

These discussions got me thinking about how to design learning activities that are unforgettable. Albert Einstein, among other figures credited with the quote, famously said that “education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school”. I want to ensure my students remember what they have learned from me, especially after all the hard work they put into the course.

So, I began experimenting with techniques that I used as a student. I had a very unorthodox method that was inspired by the comedian and counsellor Mark Gungor. He said that if you take an event and attach a strong emotion to it, that event will be seared into your memory for good. I applied this principle to my learning and created jokes for everything I wanted to remember. The funnier the joke, the stronger the emotion, and the better my memory of it.

Activities to reinforce learning

I thought it would be interesting to apply this approach to my teaching, regardless of whether it was through a quiz, a group project or a tutorial activity. So, every learning activity I created came packaged with its own scenario. The more fun the scenario, or the more shocking the conclusion, the better the students remembered the learning points and their efforts to achieve it.

I can tell how effective this approach has been when students consult me for help. Instead of explaining the concept, I can just invoke the name of the relevant learning activity. For example, I could say: “Do you remember how you found the spy in the ‘Who’s the spy?’ activity?” Immediately, students light up as they recall the concept or what they did.

Engaging the imagination

This is not the only ingredient for making learning activities unforgettable. The other reason I create fictitious scenarios and situate learning activities in them is that it provides fertile soil for the students’ imagination. This is particularly powerful when we invite them to role-play. There, students step out of their identities to be someone else – which enables them to have more fun learning.

This works well for group projects and discussions, where students within the group may differ in abilities and competencies. Fast learners may not feel a need to help their slower counterparts, and slower learners may be too embarrassed to seek help. In the context of the role-play, learners unite around a common mission to solve a problem and save the day.

This group mission prompts learners to emotionally invest themselves into the topic and to collaborate with each other in order to solve the problem. Given the chance to temporarily be someone else, students can put aside the stress that they often impose on themselves and have fun. As someone else, students are more inclined to engage in peer teaching and learning with each other. They can contribute their own insights and help one another out if they find themselves lost without additional prompting. This helps to reinforce the culture of collaboration that we try to foster in the module.

Difficulty and challenge

However, there is another issue. If we design activities meant for stronger students, the weaker students will feel lost and disengage from the class. If we design for the weaker students, stronger students will complete the task quickly on their own, become bored and disengage from the class.

To solve this conundrum, I found it effective to borrow two categories from game design: “difficulty” and “challenge”. A problem can have a low difficulty, or be easy, but be challenging or it can be difficult but not challenging at all.

A problem is difficult when it is hard to accomplish, and it depends very much on the learner’s ability to succeed. A sharp learner, for example, may not struggle much with a difficult problem, but a slower learner may feel lost and be unable to solve the problem unless someone steps in.

On the other hand, a problem is challenging when it requires effort rather than ability to solve it. Hence, a challenging-yet-easy problem can be solved by both fast and slower learners, and they will both need to work hard to find the solution since the answer is not immediately achievable.

With these categories in mind, we can design learning activities that have low difficulty but are still challenging enough for stronger students. This is achieved by providing just enough scaffolding and guiding resources, such as a Q&A resource page, that weaker students can refer to for help. This mirrors the way computer games leave clues and hints lying around.

For formative activities, I calibrate them to be easy yet challenging. In my course, this means that someone who has just learned Microsoft Excel will be able to solve the problem even with minimal experience. But it is challenging in a sense that the most experienced Excel user will not find the answer immediately and will have to work towards the answer, too.

For summative assessments, I will calibrate them to be just as challenging but with a higher difficulty level. There will be fewer scaffolds and guiding resources available. I typically pick out scenarios without clear answers, and so students have to talk within their groups to convince themselves of the right solutions.

Satisfaction and shock

The greater the challenge of the activity, the more we must ensure that students find the activity satisfying, as a reward for completing the challenge. Some activities are satisfying once the learner completes them. But sometimes the satisfaction may not be enough. To combat this, I usually test these activities with my teaching assistants, who are all undergraduates. I observe their behaviour and note their feedback for improvement.

Role-playing is useful in augmenting satisfaction levels. Depending on the assigned scenario, accomplishing the task can leave students feeling as if they’ve just solved one of humanity’s greatest dilemmas or that they have made the world a better place with their solution.

Sometimes, we can conclude the activity with a shocking revelation or a mind-blowing learning point that they least expect. For example, in one of my learning activities, students are tasked to develop an allocation algorithm to enrol children for a special learning programme with limited slots. Students feel incredibly accomplished finding the solution. However, when we get them to reflect on their solution, students soon discover that they had unintentionally prioritised children from more privileged backgrounds.

Like a plot twist in a movie, the students’ sense of accomplishment is almost immediately replaced with shock as they realise how their solution perpetuates inequality. This has a profound impact on them, making them more cautious about such issues when they carry out subsequent exercises.

These learning activities may be somewhat theatrical. But they help in generating strong emotions, which helps to sear the learning deep into students’ memories.

The result: an unforgettable learning experience. I stay in touch with many former students from two years ago and they still fondly remember various activities and learning points from the module. I believe this is an education that Einstein would be proud of.

Jonathan Y. H. Sim is an instructor in the department of philosophy at the  National University of Singapore .

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Instructional Design Framework

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Course design is a complex endeavor. With ADDIE and other design methodologies, you can take a systematic approach to developing and improving your courses. 

What is course design?

When designing any course, it is important to first understand:

  • the learning context and learners' needs
  • why you will engage learners in certain kinds of activities
  • what support learners will need to meet the goals of the course.

In designing and implementing a learning experience, observed or gathered feedback of the students' and instructors' experience of the course is necessary to evaluate learning and refine the course.

This whole process, from initial understanding to implementation and evaluation, might collectively be called course design . 

A systematic approach to designing learning experiences

ADDIE is a foundational instructional design methodology that provides a structure for reliably creating effective learning experiences for you and your students. ADDIE stands for: 

  • Analyze :   This first step in the course design process encourages you to analyze the learning needs of the course by identifying who you anticipate the learners in your class will be, their likely prior knowledge and level of preparation, and the outcomes and goals of your class.
  • Design:  Map out exactly what your course outcomes will be; that is, what do you expect students to be able to do and know by the time the course is over. Build your syllabus and outline your course schedule. Consider how your proposed activities and assignments will align with your course learning goals.
  • Develop:  Create and refine your course learning activities and assignments in line with your course syllabus and schedule.
  • Implement:  Deliver your class in whatever mix of modalities  is most appropriate, paying attention to how students are receiving the course content, and responding along the way.
  • Evaluate:  Ask students for feedback on their learning experience (even after an individual activity). Reflect on the feedback and your own experiences, and determine what changes you might like to make. Start the ADDIE process over again to iterate and revise the course and instruction.

The reality of building and improving a course tends to be incremental and iterative, so expect to move through these different phases at different times for various elements of the course. For example, you may be implementing a new small-group learning activity for one unit, while simultaneously developing a lecture presentation based on student feedback for another unit.

Rather than a single linear process akin to flowing one way down a waterfall, you'll likely go through multiple simultaneous ADDIE cycles throughout the entire course and across different iterations of the course.

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Chapter 11: Ensuring quality teaching in a digital age

11.9 Step seven: design course structure and learning activities

The importance of providing students with a structure for learning and setting appropriate learning activities is probably the most important of all the steps towards quality teaching and learning, and yet the least discussed in the literature on quality assurance.

11.9.1 Some general observations about structure in teaching

First a definition, since this is a topic that is rarely directly discussed in either face-to-face or online teaching, despite structure being one of the main factors that influences learner success.

Three dictionary definitions of structure are as follows:

1. Something made up of a number of parts that are held or put together in a particular way.

2. The way in which parts are arranged or put together to form a whole

3. The interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity.

Teaching structure would include two critical and related elements:

  • the choice, breakdown and sequencing of the curriculum (content);
  • the deliberate organization of student activities by teacher or instructor (skills development; and assessment).

This means that in a strong teaching structure, students know exactly what they need to learn, what they are supposed to do to learn this, and when and where they are supposed to do it. In a loose structure, student activity is more open and less controlled by the teacher (although a student may independently decide to impose his or her own ‘strong’ structure on their learning). The choice of teaching structure of course has implications for the work of teachers and instructors as well as students.

In terms of the definition, ‘strong’ teaching structure is not inherently better than a ‘loose’ structure, nor inherently associated with either face-to-face or online teaching. The choice (as so often in teaching) will depend on the specific circumstances. However, choosing the optimum or most appropriate teaching structure is critical for quality teaching and learning, and while the optimum structures for online teaching share many common features with face-to-face teaching, in other ways they differ considerably.

The three main determinants of teaching structure are:

(a) the organizational requirements of the institution;

(b) the preferred philosophy of teaching of the instructor;

(c) the instructor’s perception of the needs of the students.

11.9.2 Institutional organizational requirements of face-to-face teaching

Although the institutional structure in face-to-face teaching is so familiar that it is often unnoticed or taken for granted, institutional requirements are in fact a major determinant of the way teaching is structured, as well as influencing both the work of teachers and the life of students. I list below some of the institutional requirements that influence the structure of face-to-face teaching in post-secondary education:

  • the minimum number of years of study required for a degree;
  • the program approval and review process;
  • the number of credits required for a degree;
  • the relationship between credits and contact time in the class;
  • the length of a semester and its relationship to credit hours;
  • instructor:student ratios;
  • the availability of classroom or laboratory spaces;
  • time and location of examinations.

There are probably many more. There are similar institutional organizational requirements in the school system, including the length of the school day, the timing of holidays, and so on. (To understand the somewhat bizarre reasons why the Carnegie Unit based on a Student Study Hour came to be adopted in the USA, see Wikipedia .)

As our campus-based institutions have increased in size, so have the institutional organizational requirements ‘solidified’. Without this structure it would become even more difficult to deliver consistent teaching services across the institution. Also such organizational consistency across institutions is necessary for purposes of accountability, accreditation, government funding, credit transfer, admission to graduate school, and a host of other reasons. Thus there are strong systemic reasons why these organizational requirements of face-to-face teaching are difficult if not impossible to change, at least at the institutional level.

Thus any teacher is faced by a number of massive constraints. In particular, the curriculum needs to fit within the time ‘units’ available, such as the length of the semester and the number of credits and contact hours for a particular course. The teaching has to take into account class size and classroom availability. Students (and teachers and instructors) have to be at specific places (classrooms, examination rooms, laboratories) at specific times.

Thus despite the concept of academic freedom, the structure of face-to-face teaching is to a large extent almost predetermined by institutional and organizational requirements. I am tempted to digress to question the suitability of such structural limitations for the needs of learners in a digital age, or to wonder whether faculty unions would accept such restrictions on academic freedom if they did not already exist, but the aim here is to identify which of these organizational constraints apply also to online learning, and which do not, because this will influence how we can structure teaching activities.

11.9.3 Institutional organizational requirements of online teaching

One obvious challenge for online learning, at least in its earliest days, was acceptance. There was (and still is) a lot of skepticism about the quality and effectiveness of online learning, especially from those that have never studied or taught online. So initially a lot of effort went into designing online learning with the same goals and structures as face-to-face teaching, to demonstrate that online teaching was ‘as good as’ face-to-face teaching (which, research suggests, it is).

However, this meant accepting the same course, credit and semester assumptions of face-to-face teaching. It should be noted though that as far back as 1971, the UK Open University opted for a degree program structure that was roughly equivalent in total study time to a regular, campus-based degree program, but which was nevertheless structured very differently, for instance, with full credit courses of 32 weeks’ study and half credit courses of 16 weeks’ study. One reason was to enable integrated, multi-disciplinary foundation courses. The Western Governors’ University, with its emphasis on competency-based learning, and Empire State College in New York State, with its emphasis on learning contracts for adult learners, are other examples of institutions that have different structures for teaching from the norm.

If online learning programs aim to be at least equivalent to face-to-face programs, then they are likely to adopt at least the minimum length of study for a program (e.g. four years for a bachelor’s degree in North America), the same number of total credits for a degree, and hence implicit in this is the same amount of study time as for face-to-face programs. Where the same structure begins to break down though is in calculating ‘contact time’, which by definition is usually the number of hours of classroom instruction. Thus a 13 week, 3 credit course  is roughly equal to three hours a week of classroom time over one semester of 13 weeks.

There are lots of problems with this concept of ‘contact hours’, which nevertheless is the standard measuring unit for face-to-face teaching. Study at a post-secondary level, and particularly in universities, requires much more than just turning up to lectures. A common estimate is that for every hour of classroom time, students spend a minimum of another two hours on readings, assignments, etc. Contact hours vary enormously between disciplines, with usually arts/humanities having far less contact hours than engineering or science students, who spend a much larger proportion of time in labs. Another limitation of ‘contact hours’ is that it measures input, not output.

When we move to blended or hybrid learning, we may retain the same semester structure, but the ‘contact hour’ model starts to break down. Students may spend the equivalent of only one hour a week in class, and the rest online – or maybe 15 hours in labs one week, and none the rest of the semester.

A better principle would be to ensure that the students in blended, hybrid or fully online courses or programs work to the same academic standards as the face-to-face students, or rather, spend the equivalent ‘notional’ time on doing a course or getting a degree. This means structuring the courses or programs in such a way that students have the equivalent amount of work to do, whether it is online, blended or face-to-face. However, the way that work will be distributed can very considerably, depending on the mode of delivery.

11.9.4 How much work is an online course?

Before decisions can be made about the best way to structure a blended or an online course, some assumption needs to be made about how much time students should expect to study on the course. We have seen that this really needs to be equivalent to what a full-time student would study. However, just taking the equivalent number of contact hours for the face-to-face version doesn’t allow for all the other time face-to-face students spend studying.

A reasonable estimate is that a three credit undergraduate course is roughly equivalent to about 8-9 hours study a week, or a total of roughly 100 hours over 13 weeks. (A full-time student then taking 10 x 3 credits a year, with five 3 credit courses per semester, would be studying between 40-45 hours a week during the two semesters, or slightly less if the studying continued over the inter-semester period.).

Now this is my guideline. You don’t have to agree with it. You may think this is too much or too little for your subject. That doesn’t matter. You decide the time. The important point though is that you have a fairly specific target of total time that should be spent on a course or program by an average student, knowing that some will reach the same standard more quickly and others more slowly. This total student study time for a particular chunk of study such as a course or program provides a limit or constraint within which you must structure the learning. It is also a good idea to make it clear to students from the start how much time each week you are expecting them to work on the course.

Since there is far more content that could be put in a course than students will have time to study, this usually means choosing the minimum amount of content for the course for it to be academically sound, while still allowing students time for activities such as individual research, assignments or project work. In general, because instructors are experts in a subject and students are not, there is a tendency for instructors to underestimate the amount of work required by a student to cover a topic. Again, an instructional designer can be useful here, providing a second opinion on student workload.

11.9.5 Strong or loose structure?

Another critical decision is just how much you should structure the course for the students. This will depend partly on your preferred teaching philosophy and partly on the needs of the students.

If you have a strong view of the content that must be covered in a particular course, and the sequence in which it must be presented (or if you are given a mandated curriculum by an accrediting body), then you are likely to want to provide a very strong structure, with specific topics assigned for study at particular points in the course, with student work or activities tightly linked.

If on the other hand you believe it is part of the student’s responsibility to manage and organize their study, or if you want to give students some choice about what they study and the order in which they do it, so long as they meet the learning goals for the course, then you are likely to opt for a loose structure.

This decision should also be influenced by the type of students you are teaching. If students come without independent learning skills, or know nothing about the subject area, they will need a strong structure to guide their studies, at least initially. If on the other hand they are fourth year undergraduates or graduate students with a high degree of self-management, then a looser structure may be more suitable to their needs. Another determining factor will be the number of students in your class. With large numbers of students, a strong, well defined structure will be necessary to control your workload, as loose structures require more negotiation and support for individual students.

My preference is for a strong structure for fully online teaching, so students are clear about what they are expected to do, and when it has to be done by, even at graduate level. The difference is that with post-graduates, I will give them more choices of what to study, and longer periods to complete more complex assignments, but I will still define clearly the desired learning outcomes in terms of skill development in particular, such as research skills or analytical thinking, and provide clear deadlines for student work, otherwise I find my workload increases dramatically.

Blended learning provides an opportunity to enable students to gradually take more responsibility for their learning, but within a ‘safe’ structure of a regularly scheduled classroom event, where they have to report on any work they have been required to do on their own or in small groups. This means thinking not just at a course level but at a program level, especially for undergraduate programs. A good strategy would be to put a heavy emphasis on face-to-face teaching in the first year, and gradually introduce online learning through blended or hybrid classes in second and third year, with some fully online courses in the fourth year, thus preparing students better for lifelong learning.

ETEC 522 is a loosely structured graduate program, in that students organize their own work around the course themes. The weekly topic structure is on the right, and the outcomes of student activities are in the main body, posted by students. Note this is not using a learning management system, but WordPress, a content management system, which allows students more easily to post and organize their activities.

11.9.6 Moving a face-to-face course online

This is the easiest way to determine the structure for an online course. The structure of the course will have already been decided to a large extent, in that the content of each week’s work is clearly defined by lecture topics. The main challenge will not be structuring the content but ensuring that students have adequate online activities (see later). Most learning management systems enable the course to be structured in units of one week, following the classroom topics. This provides a clear timetable for the students. This applies also to alternative approaches such as problem-based learning, where student activities may be broken down almost on a daily basis.

However, it is important to ensure that the face-to-face content is moved in a way that is suitable for online learning. For instance, Powerpoint slides may not fully represent what is covered in the verbal part of a lecture. This often means reorganizing or redesigning the content so that it is complete in an online version (your instructional designer should be able to help with this). At this point, you should look at the amount of work the online students will need to do in the set time period to make sure that with all the readings and activities it does not exceed the rough average weekly load you have set. It is at this point you may have to make some choices about either removing some content or activities, or making the work ‘optional.’ However, if optional it should not be assessed, and if it’s not assessed, students will quickly learn to avoid it. Doing this time analysis incidentally sometimes indicates that you’ve overloaded the face-to-face component as well.

It needs to be constantly in your mind that students studying online will almost certainly study in a more random manner than students attending classes on a regular basis. Instead of the discipline of being at a certain place at a certain time, online students still need clarity about what they are supposed to do each week or maybe over a longer time period as they move into later levels of study. What is essential is that students do not procrastinate online and hope to catch up towards the end of the course, which is often the main cause of failure in online courses (as in face-to-face classes).

We will see that defining clear activities for students is critical for success in online learning. We shall see when we discuss student activities below that there is often a trade-off to be made between content and activities if the student workload is to be kept to manageable proportions.

11.9.7 Structuring a blended learning course

Many blended learning courses are designed almost by accident, rather than deliberately. Online components, such as a learning management system to contain online learning materials, lecture notes or online readings, are gradually added to regular classroom teaching. There are obvious dangers in doing this if the face-to-face component is not adjusted at the same time. After a number of years, more and more materials, activities and work for students is added online, often optional but sometimes essential for assignments. Student workloads can increase dramatically as a result – and so too can the instructor’s, with more and more material to manage.

Rethinking a course for blended learning means thinking carefully about the structure and student workload. Means et al. (2011) hypothesised that one reason for better results from blended learning was due to students spending more time on task; in other words, they worked harder. This is good, but not if all their courses are adding more work. It is essential therefore when moving to a blended model to make sure that extra work online is compensated by less time in class (including travel time).

11.9.8 Designing a new online course or program

If you are offering a course or program that has not to date been offered on campus (for instance a professional or applied masters program) then you have much more scope for developing a unique structure that best fits the online environment and also the type of students that may take this kind of course (for example, working adults).

The important point here is that the way this time is divided up does not have to be the same as for a face-to-face class, because there is no organizational need for the student to be at a particular time or place in order to get the instruction. Usually an online course will be ‘ready’ and available for release to the students before the course officially begins. Students could in theory do the course more quickly or more slowly, if they wished. Thus the instructor has more options or choices about how to structure the course and in particular about how to control the student work flow.

This is particularly important if the course is being taken mainly by lifelong learners or part-time students, for instance. Indeed, it may be possible to structure a course in such a way that different students could work at different speeds. Competency-based learning means that students can work through the same course or program at very different speeds. Some open universities even have continuous enrolment, so they can start and finish at different times. Most students opting for an online course are likely to be working, so you may need to allow them longer to complete a course than full-time students. For instance, if on-campus masters programs need to be completed in one or two years, students may need up to five years to complete an online professional masters program.

11.9.9 Key principles in structuring a course

Now there may be good reasons for not doing some of these things, but this will be because of pedagogical rather than institutional organizational reasons. For instance, I’m not keen on continuous enrollment, or self-paced instruction, because especially at graduate level I make heavy use of online discussion forums and online group work. I like students to work through a course at roughly the same pace, because it leads to more focused discussions, and organizing group work when students are at different points in the course is difficult if not impossible. However, in other courses, for instance a math course, self-paced instruction may make a lot of sense. I will discuss other non-traditional course structures when we discuss student activities below.

However you structure the course, though, two basic principles remain:

  • there must be some notional idea of how much time students should spend each week on the course;
  • students should be clear each week about what they have to do and when it needs to be done.

11.9.10 Designing student activities

This is the most critical part of the design process, especially but not just only for fully online students, who have neither the regular classroom structure or campus environment for contact with the instructor and other students nor the opportunity for spontaneous questions and discussions in a face-to-face class. Regular student activities though are critical for keeping all students engaged and on task, irrespective of mode of delivery.

These can include:

  • assigned readings;
  • simple multiple choice self-assessment tests of understanding with automated feedback, using the computer-based testing facility within a learning management system;
  • questions regarding short paragraph answers which may be shared with other students for comparison or discussion;
  • formally marked and assessed monthly assignments in the form of short essays;
  • individual or group project work spaced over several weeks;
  • an individual student blog or e-portfolio that enables the student to reflect on their recent learning, and which may be shared with the instructor or other students;
  • online discussion forums, which the instructor will need to organize and monitor.

There are many other activities that instructors can devise to keep students engaged. However, all such activities need to be clearly linked to the stated learning outcomes for the course and can be seen by students as helping them prepare for any formal assessment. If learning outcomes are focused on skills development, then the activities should be designed to give students opportunities to develop or practice such skills.

These activities also need to be regularly spaced and an estimate made of the time students will need to complete the activities. In step eight, we shall see that student engagement in such activities will need to be monitored by the instructor.

It is at this point where some hard decisions may need to be made about the balance between ‘content’ and ‘activities’. Students must have enough time to do regular activities (other than just reading) once each week at least, or their risk of dropping out or failing the course will increase dramatically. In particular they will need some way of getting feedback or comments on their activities, either from the instructor or from other students, so the design of the course will have to take account of the instructors’ workload as well as the students’.

In my view, most university and college courses are overstuffed with content and not enough consideration is given to what students need to do to absorb, apply and evaluate such content. I have a very rough rule of thumb that students should spend no more than half their time reading content and attending lectures, the rest being spent on interpreting, analyzing, or applying that content through the kinds of activities listed above. As students become more mature and more self-managed the proportion of time spent on activities can increase, with the students themselves being responsible for identifying appropriate content that will enable them to meet the goals and criteria laid down by the instructor. However, that is my personal view. Whatever your teaching philosophy though, there must be plenty of activities with some form of feedback for online students, or they will drop like flies on a cold winter’s day.

11.9.11 Many structures, one high standard

There are many other ways to ensure an appropriate structure for an online course. For instance, the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative provides a complete course ‘in a box’ for standard first and second year courses in two year colleges. These include a learning management system site with content, objectives and activities pre-loaded, with an accompanying textbook. The content is carefully structured, with in-built student activities. The instructors’ role is mainly delivery, providing student feedback and marking where needed. These courses have proved to be very effective, in that most students successfully complete such programs.

The History instructor in  Scenario J  kept a normal three lectures a week structure for the first three weeks, then students worked entirely online in small groups on a major project for five weeks, then returned to class for one three-hour session a week for five weeks for students to report back on and discuss their projects as a whole class group.

We saw that in competency-based learning , students can work at their own speed through highly structured courses academically, in terms of topic sequences and learner activities, that nevertheless have flexibility in the time students can take to successfully complete a competency.

The Integrated Science Program at McMaster University is built around 6-10 week undergraduate research projects. 

cMOOC’s such as Stephen Downes, George Siemen’s, and Dave Cormier’s #Change 11 have a loose structure, with different topics with different contributors each week, but student activities, such as blog posts or comments, are not organized by the course designers but left to the students. However, these are not credit courses, and few students work all the way through the whole MOOC, and that is not their intent. The Stanford and MIT xMOOC’s on the other hand are highly structured, with student activities, and the feedback is fully automated. Less than 10 per cent of students who start these MOOCs successfully complete them, but they too are non-credit courses. Increasingly MOOCs are becoming shorter, some of as little as three or four weeks in length.

Online learning enables teachers and instructors to break away from a rigid three semester, 13 week, three lectures a week structure, and build courses around structures that best meet the needs of learners and the preferred teaching method of the teacher or instructor. My aim in a credit course or program is to ensure high academic quality and high completion rates. For me that means developing an appropriate structure and related learning activities as a key step in achieving quality in credit online courses.

Activity 11.9 Structuring your course or program

1. How many hours a week should a typical student spend studying a three credit course? If your answer differs from mine (8-9 hours), why?

2. If you were designing an online credit program from scratch, would you need to follow a ‘traditional’ structure of three credits over 13 weeks? If not, how would you structure such a program, and why?

3. Do you think most credit courses are ‘overstuffed’ with content and do not have enough learning activities? Do we focus too much on content and not enough on skills development in higher education? How does that affect the structure of courses? How much does it affect the quality of the learning?

Teaching in a Digital Age by Anthony William (Tony) Bates is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Design for Learning: Principles, Processes, and Praxis

(3 reviews)

learning activities designing

Jason K. McDonald, Brigham Young University

Richard E. West, Brigham Young University

Copyright Year: 2021

Publisher: EdTech Books

Language: English

Formats Available

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Reviewed by Ann Jerks, Associate Professor, Tidewater Community College on 1/9/24

The book covers instructional design practice in part one to include the role of a learning designer and how that can encompass many titles, responsibilities, and skills. Part one also includes the importance of problem framing and how the... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The book covers instructional design practice in part one to include the role of a learning designer and how that can encompass many titles, responsibilities, and skills. Part one also includes the importance of problem framing and how the learning designer role should go beyond the formula of creating a learning solution that will solve “x.” I really enjoy how the book provides multiple examples and scenarios of how to capture the actual problem(s) and what tools can help highlight the problem statement. Part two includes instructional design knowledge, learning theories, the instructional design process, and instructional activities and managing stakeholders, clients, and the project team. Including Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a very beneficial reminder that autonomous environments may not always produce the results and outcomes that are needed but it relies on the learner to be ready and willing to learn.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content appears accurate with external links to additional resources that populate appropriately to the content and video media.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The content is relevant but also includes foundational learning theories and fundamentals that contribute to the longevity of learning design.

Clarity rating: 5

The text provides adequate context for any terminology used and describes the different titles and roles often lumped into the learning designer role. The content was easy to follow and navigate.

Consistency rating: 5

The text is consistent with terminology.

Modularity rating: 5

The text contains two main parts: Instructional Design Practice and Instructional Design Knowledge. Part one contains four subsections: Understanding, Exploring, Creating, and Evaluating that goes into a learning designer role and how it applies to practice. Part two contains four subsections: Sources of Design Knowledge, Instructional Design Processes, Designing Instructional Activities, and Design Relationships. Some chapters and subsections were longer than others but the content breakdown was easy to digest.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The topics are presented in a logical sequence. I felt that most resources on instructional design often have part two (instructional design knowledge) first instead of having the instructional design practice at the forefront.

Interface rating: 5

The text was very easy to navigate. I enjoyed having the ability to listen to the material instead of reading, however, some of the audio contained additional information that was distracting to the content such as a URL or page reference. The images and media enhanced the content. The reflective exercises and example forms and worksheets are very beneficial.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I did not encounter any grammatical errors or spelling concerns. Resources were cited appropriately.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The content includes designing for diverse learners and offers methods to recognize learner needs, potential considerations for various barriers to learning and possible solutions. Incorporating UDL helps highlight the importance and need for accessible learning.

I would love to have access to all the examples and worksheets all in one instead of having them at the end of the sections.

Reviewed by Blevins Samantha, Instructional Designer & Learning Architect, Radford University on 1/12/23

This book is a comprehensive look at the ever evolving field of instructional design, sometimes referred to as learning design. Both up to date practical implications, as well as theoretical underpinnings are included, giving a holistic view of... read more

This book is a comprehensive look at the ever evolving field of instructional design, sometimes referred to as learning design. Both up to date practical implications, as well as theoretical underpinnings are included, giving a holistic view of the field.

This text appears to be free from errors and bias.

This text is extremely relevant for those just entering the field of instructional design, but can also be used as a review of current practices by those currently working in the field. Relevant research for the field is included, and the content could be easily updated as relevant research is published and presented.

Clarity rating: 4

Clarity of the chapters varies throughout the text, but overall it is well written and easy to follow. The text includes many examples and case studies are included and can be easily used on a one-off basis or in a more comprehensive way.

Consistency rating: 4

The text is well organized and all chapters follow a similar format. Included are figures, case students, examples, tables, and videos in a way that enhance the text. However, reflective exercises are sometimes included in chapters, which would be even more helpful and valuable if they were included in every single chapter.

Modularity rating: 4

The text would serve as a holistic reading for a course/program, or could easily be used in sections as deemed appropriate. Some of the chapters are hefty, so it would take some time for an instructor to decide what chapters/sections would be appropriate for their own course.

The text is clear and easy to follow. Each section is thoughtfully organized into its respective theme.

The text is easy to navigate. Audio files of each chapter are also available, which is a great exampled of including universal design priciples.

I did not encounter any grammatical errors.

The text includes a diverse representation of the field, both in viewpoints and through the inclusion of a variety of races, genders and backgrounds.

Reviewed by Pamela Sullivan, Professor, James Madison University on 10/19/22

Design for Learning: Principles, Processes and Praxis is a comprehensive view of instructional design intended to both facilitate an introductory level of knowledge and to review the current practices of design for practitioners. These dual... read more

Design for Learning: Principles, Processes and Praxis is a comprehensive view of instructional design intended to both facilitate an introductory level of knowledge and to review the current practices of design for practitioners. These dual intentions result in an expansive review of knowledge and practices contained with a mammoth thirty-six chapter text. The authors/editors stated goals for utilizers of this text are to help complete a basic design project and to help create effective and engaging learning environments by exploring the current design thinking. While those dual purposes can and do lead to a great deal of information included within this text, each chapter stands on its own and it would be entirely possible to create a smaller set of readings customized to individual purposes from within this resource. The index and table of contents are helpful in organizing smaller groups of readings.

This text appears to be accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

Because this text is intended for beginning learners in the field or as a review of current practices, it does focus on content that both remains relevant and is timeless research inherent to the field, as well as more up-to-date practices and implementation of said research. The very focused chapters make it possible to update information on an on-going basis whilst continuing access to the literature reviews that wouldn’t change. These updates would be straightforward and easy to implement by simply updating the affected chapters.

The clarity of the text did vary between chapters but overall the text was very well-written. Although some chapters contained more technical information than others, jargon was avoided and the information was adequately explained for the beginning level readers comprising the stated audience for the text. Many examples and case studies were provided to illuminate the ideas presented

All of the chapters in this text are well-organized and follow a similar format. They include figures, tables, case studies, examples, and videos when appropriate to illustrate the ideas in the text. These additions to the text are quite helpful and useful. However, some of the chapters also contain reflective exercises to aid the reader in summarizing or applying the information and some chapters do not. This is unfortunate as those exercises are quite helpful for beginners to the field. Several chapters are also reprints, by permission, of work originally printed elsewhere, and these chapters are often formatted differently than others in the text. An instructor may need to carefully filter these chapters to ensure students follow the flow of information. Similarly, there are stylistic differences between chapters, expected in an edited work, but something an instructor might need to account for to students. One example of this is the included videos, some are embedded within the text while some are presented as a set of links within a table. As an instructor, noting this and including explicit instructions for your students as to whether and when to watch the videos might be important for a successful class experience.

This text lends itself to subdivision into smaller reading sections, in fact, with thirty-six chapters, it might be necessary. The text is grouped in sections with several chapters included in each section and a brief introduction at the beginning of each section. The section organization is well-thought out and described for the reader, however, the chapters contained within could benefit from reorganizing and better links between them. Information varied quite a bit across chapters, from general to highly specific, and it will take time as an instructor to sort through which chapters provide the best fit for class purposes. Conversely, some information is repeated several times across different chapters as well.

The topics in the text are presented in a clear, logical fashion. The sections are helpful in organizing the chapters into themes to support the overall goals of the text.

The text is easily navigable. Display features and items such as videos work as integrated into the text. Each chapter is available as an audio file as well, in an excellent example of universal design.

The text contains no grammatical errors.

This text includes chapters by a diverse set of authors and while the representation of a variety of races, genders, backgrounds in examples and videos also varies by chapter, across the entire text there is a diverse representation.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Understanding 1. Becoming a Learning Designer 2. Designing for Diverse Learners 3. Conducting Research for Design 4. Determining Environmental and Contextual Needs 5. Conducting a Learner Analysis 
  • Exploring 6. Problem Framing 7. Task and Content Analysis 8. Documenting Instructional Design Decisions
  • Creating 9. Generating Ideas 10. Instructional Strategies 11. Instructional Design Prototyping Strategies
  • Evaluating 12. Design Critique 13. The Role of Design Judgment and Reflection in Instructional Design 14. Instructional Design Evaluation 15. Continuous Improvement of Instructional Materials
  • Sources of Design Knowledge 16. Learning Theories 17. The Role of Theory in Instructional Design 18. Making Good Design Judgments via the Instructional Theory Framework 19. The Nature and Use of Precedent in Designing 20. Standards and Competencies for Instructional Design and Technology Professionals
  • Instructional Design Processes 21. Design Thinking 22. Robert Gagné and the Systematic Design of Instruction 23. Designing Instruction for Complex Learning 24. Curriculum Design Processes 25. Agile Design Processes and Project Management
  • Designing Instructional Activities 26. Designing Technology-Enhanced Learning Experiences 27. Designing Instructional Text 28. Audio and Video Production for Instructional Design Professionals 29. Using Visual and Graphic Elements While Designing Instructional Activities 30. Simulations and Games 31. Designing Informal Learning Environments 32. The Design of Holistic Learning Environments 33. Measuring Student Learning
  • Design Relationships 34. Working With Stakeholders and Clients 35. Leading Project Teams 36. Implementation and Instructional Design

Ancillary Material

About the book.

Our purpose in this book is twofold. First, we introduce the basic skill set and knowledge base used by practicing instructional designers. We do this through chapters contributed by experts in the field who have either academic, research-based backgrounds, or practical, on-the-job experience (or both). Our goal is that students in introductory instructional design courses will be able to use this book as a guide for completing a basic instructional design project. We also hope the book is useful as a ready resource for more advanced students or others seeking to develop their instructional design knowledge and skills.

About the Contributors

Dr. Jason K. McDonald is an Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University and the program coordinator of the university’s Design Thinking minor. He brings twenty years of experience in industry and academia, with a career spanning a wide-variety of roles connected to instructional design: face-to-face training; faculty development; corporate eLearning; story development for instructional films; and museum/exhibit design. He gained this experience as a university instructional designer; an executive for a large, international non-profit; a digital product director for a publishing company; and as an independent consultant.

Dr. McDonald's research focuses around advancing design practice and design education. He studies design as an expression of certain types of relationships with others and with the world, how designers experience rich and authentic ways of being human, the contingent and changeable nature of design, and design as a human accomplishment (meaning how design is not a natural process but is created by designers and so is open to continually being recreated by designers). 

At BYU, Dr. McDonald has taught courses in instructional design, media and culture change, project management, learning psychology, and design theory. 

Dr. Richard E. West is an associate professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University. He teaches courses in instructional design, academic writing, qualitative research methods, program/product evaluation, psychology, creativity and innovation, technology integration skills for preservice teachers, and the foundations of the field of learning and instructional design technology.

Dr. West’s research focuses on developing educational institutions that support 21st century learning. This includes teaching interdisciplinary and collaborative creativity and design thinking skills, personalizing learning through open badges, increasing access through open education, and developing social learning communities in online and blended environments. He has published over 90 articles, co-authoring with over 80 different graduate and undergraduate students, and received scholarship awards from the American Educational Research Association, Association for Educational Communications and Technology, and Brigham Young University.

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Designing learning activities

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Enabling learners to achieve their learning outcomes through engagement with meaningful learning activities.

Once the course aims and learning outcomes have been established, you should plan and design the learning activities and assessments that will enable students to achieve them. The order in which you do this is not usually important, provided they align with the course aims and learning outcomes. 

Aligning the elements of the course 

As we have seen, learning outcomes must include action verbs that can be measured. From a learning design perspective, this implies:  

The selection of activities should be driven by the learning outcomes. 

Assessments should target the level of proficiency as stated in the outcomes. 

For example, if a learning outcome includes a verb such as argue, which is at the ‘evaluation’ level in Bloom’s Taxonomy , learners should engage in activities that will enable them to reach and demonstrate that level of competency. 

Designing learning activities with the ABC method 

When designing learning activities, it is useful to reflect on the learning process. At UCL we utilise the ABC Learning Design method , based on the Conversational Framework (Laurillard, 2002), and the six learning types : 

Acquisition 

Discussion , investigation , collaboration .

  • Practice, and 
  • Production. 

The learning types have proven to be an effective course design tool because they involve creating flexible learning paths and course narratives centred around how people actually learn. Once a sequence of activities has been established, the tools or technologies that best facilitate the activities and the learners’ path towards proficiency can then be assessed.  

When designing your short course, it is helpful to frame your thinking using these types. 

This type tends to focus on content and what learners do when they read, listen, and watch. In this way learners acquire new concepts, models, vocabulary, models, and methodologies. Acquisition should be reflective as learners align new ideas to their existing knowledge. 

Acquisitional learning activities include making articles and books available, delivering presentations and lectures, and having learners listen to or watch videos, podcasts, and animations. 

Discussion activities require a learner to articulate their ideas and questions as well as challenging and responding to those from their tutor and peers. 

Discursive learning activities include in-person seminars or structured online tasks within asynchronous discussion fora, and synchronous classroom tools such as debates and role plays. 

Investigative activities encourage learners to take an active and exploratory approach to learning, searching for and evaluating a range of new information and ideas. 

Either online or offline, students are guided to analyse, compare, and critique the texts, data, documents and resources within the concepts and ideas being taught. 

Collaboration asks learners to work together in small groups to achieve a common project goal. It is about taking part in the process of knowledge building itself, and may build on acquisition, discussion, or investigation activities. 

Collaborative learning activities might include paired or small group projects taking place online or on campus, with plenty of reflection and discussion to produce a joint output. 

Practice activities enable knowledge to be applied in context, giving learners the opportunity to try out something they have learned and receive feedback on, whether via self-reflection, from peers, their tutor, or from tools and activity outcomes. 

Practice tasks can include lab work, field trips, placements, and practice-based projects. Online, learners may engage with videos of methods, simulations, and sample datasets. Online quizzes can be used to test application and understanding. 

Production 

Production focuses on how a teacher motivates learners to consolidate what they have learned by articulating their current conceptual understanding and reflecting upon how they used it in practice. Production is usually associated with formative and summative assessment. 

Activities for this type can include essays, designs, performances, and videos, made available both in-person and online. 

If you are working with a Learning Designer, you will be fully supported in your understanding of and engagement with these learning types. In the next section we will think more about the two final types, practice and production, and their relation to assessment in the short course context. 

Example of a short course learning activity 

Here is an example learning activity from a course about Transfer Medicine :

Spot The Mistakes!

Watch this video of a transfer team simulating a chaotic packaging sequence. Consider what areas could have been improved before reading on. 

We’re sure you have spotted a whole load of mistakes in the video. 

In the comments section below we invite you to explore: 

  • Solutions. Give us your way of improving the mistake listed in the most recent comment. 
  • Mistakes. List a different mistake you’ve seen in the video for the next commenter to improve on! 

This activity involves two learning types: acquisition and discussion. Learners engage in the acquisitional learning type when watching the video and discussion type when writing comments and responding to those of others afterwards. Crucially, however, both sections contain clear guidance that encourages targeted reflection during the acquisition stage and structured engagement during the discussion stage. 

Further information 

Full information about ABC learning design, including videos and self-directed resources, can be found on its website . 

Instructional Design: Everything You Need to Know

What is instructional design.

Instructional design models and theories

Instructional design in the modern workplace

The instructional designer’s toolbelt

The future of instructional design

Working with subject matter experts (SMEs)

Instructional design is the design, development, and delivery of learning experiences. It constructs those experiences in such a way that learners acquire either knowledge or skills . Instructional designers follow various academic theories and models related to how people learn and the cognitive processes behind the learning experience. These models ensure the instruction is as effective as possible for imparting knowledge or teaching skills to learners.

What is a learning experience?

A learning experience can refer to anything from teachers in the classroom, to online courses, instructional manuals, PowerPoint presentations, and simulations. It includes any experience where the intention is for learning of any kind to take place. 

Instructional designers are considered the “architects” of learning experiences . In both the education and corporate environment, they often serve as directors and project managers of the course/lesson development process.

instructional designers planning a project

A brief history of instructional design

The emergence of instructional design as an academic subject and profession came about through a combination of other disciplines including behavioural sciences, military training practices, and education. 

The basis of instructional design theories as we know them today is rooted in World War II. Soldiers needed extensive training on many complex tasks. Using research from B.F. Skinner’s studies in behavioural science, military instructors learned to break tasks down into individual learning goals. In doing this, they saw much better results.

From there, many of the successful military training practices from the war were transferred to business and education. Throughout the rest of the twentieth century, theories, models, and processes around learning sprang up and were fine tuned. A lot of these theories still inform the way we learn in school and are trained at work today.

The Magic Triangle of Learning

When it comes to designing a learning experience, instructional designers must take three main components into account to ensure the learning is effective: learning objectives, learning activities, and assessments. This is known as the “Magic Triangle” of learning .

For example, there must be a learning objective which explicitly states what a learner should be able to do once they have completed the course/lesson. This learning objective will then inform the types of activities chosen to be included on the course. The types of assessments and their difficulty level will also be informed by the learning objective and learning activities.

Once these three elements are aligned, effective learning can take place

Learning Objectives

A learning objective defines and sets boundaries on what learners should know or be able to do at the end of the course that they couldn’t do before.

They are a way to clearly define the expected outcome of a course in terms of demonstrable skills or knowledge that will be acquired by the learner as a result of the instruction provided. The most important part of a learning objective is that its success can be measured.

Many instructional design models and theories provide explicit verbs and best practices for constructing learning objectives and using them correctly. They are seen as critical to the learning process because they inform all other instructional design decisions thereafter.

Check out these articles for further reading on learning objectives: What is a learning objective? How to write a learning objective

Learning Activities

Learning Activities are all the course assets used to deploy the learning experience. They are actions that are planned and created by instructional designers during course design and taken or used by the learner during the learning process.

Types of learning activities can range from audio, video, animation, gamification, and simulation, to more traditional activities such as reading and lecturing. 

5 Steps to Building Training Effectively

Check out this free ebook to learn more about what you can do during the training development process to ensure your course provide effective learning for employees.

Learning Assessments

Assessments are the final step in the learning process. Learning assessments include elements like quizzes, exams, or graded simulations of real-world situations. 

They are the final point in the “Magic Triangle” of instructional design because they are a way of checking that the learning objective was met. Moreover, they’re an important part of the cognitive “action and reflection” processes needed for learning to take place effectively. 

Summative Assessments

Summative assessment usually quantifies results on a graded basis (e.g. 8/10 is considered a “pass”). This method is often criticized for being too simplistic and arbitrary to truly evaluate the learners’ achievement or the effectiveness of the training material. However, these downsides can be mitigated with effective pre-testing and post-testing .

Formative Assessments

Want to learn more about using assessments effectively in instructional design?  Check out this on-demand webinar recording: 5 Ways Effective Assessments Can Catapult Your Learning Outcomes

Instructional Design Models & Theories

Bloom's taxonomy.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchical model for classifying different levels of complexity in the learning process. The model categorizes learning objectives into three core principles: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor. 

The Cognitive model is the most widely used when it comes to creating learning objectives during instructional design. The idea is to view learning objectives in behavioural terms so that they can be easily defined and measured according to what knowledge/skills the learner acquires and how their behaviour (or performance) improves as a result.

The model is framed to show how learners can move up structured levels of complexity in their depth of knowledge and level of skill in a given topic or process.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is useful for instructional designers because they can use it to:

  • Assess a learner’s current level of knowledge
  • Create training specifically designed to move them up to the next level 
  • Frame learning objectives, activities, and assessments around the verbs provided by Bloom to make learning measurable

learning activities designing

Source: Carleton University

The ADDIE Model

ADDIE is another instructional design framework used by instructional designers to develop training courses.

The model involves five main phases for course development: 

  • D evelopment
  • I mplementation
  • E valuation

ADDIE was originally created for the armed forces back in the 1970s, but it was quickly adopted by instructional designers across the whole spectrum of learning experiences and is still a highly popular tool to this day.

The different activities that take place in each phase of ADDIE vary according to the situation and learning environment. But the five main phases mentioned above are almost always present when ADDIE is used by instructional designers.

infographic of instructional design ADDIE model

The 5 Steps of ADDIE

5 essential strategies for effective course design.

Check out this on-demand webinar recording by eLearning Brothers and Synapse outlining five essential ingredients for effective course design.

Successive Approximation Model (SAM)

SAM is the Successive Approximation Model, a framework for instructional design that was developed in answer to the more agile approach to product and business development being adopted by organizations en masse. 

SAM is widely used by L&D teams who need to take a fast, iterative approach to course development so they can keep up with the demand for training in their organizations. It is a much more fluid process than traditional instructional design methods, allowing (even encouraging) teams to collaboratively fail fast and repeatedly. The idea is that the more you try and fail, the quicker you will get to the perfect solution. 

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a philosophy and process that focuses on the user, challenges assumptions, and redefines problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with an initial level of understanding. 

It is a way of thinking and working, but also comprises a collection of hands-on methods. The five steps or phases of Design Thinking are:

Just like SAM, this methodology was not originally developed for instructional design. Design Thinking developed over time across a number of different fields, all trying to address the same problem: how can we creatively problem-solve while addressing the needs of the end user? It’s earliest origins can be traced back to the ‘50s and ‘60s and it was first used in fields like engineering and architecture. 

In more recent years, it has made its way into the interests of instructional designers as they attempt to design training around complex, multi-faceted problems in the organization.

How Design Thinking is Transforming the Learning Experience

Learn all about the concept of Design Thinking and how to leverage it in your corporate training design process.

Instructional Design in the Modern Workplace

Technology and the internet have changed the face of instructional design and the way employees learn in the workplace . Although instructional design and corporate learning were arguably quite late to the party when it came to the transition to digital, online learning is now in full swing and grows more sophisticated by the year. 

What is eLearning?

eLearning is the delivery of learning or training through any digital method. It has largely replaced traditional instructor-led training (ILT) in many workplaces and continues to do so. It is generally more cost-effective and when designed correctly, can be far more effective than marathon (ILT) sessions.

online learning

Benefits of eLearning:

  • Accessibility When the needed information is freely available for learners at the click of a mouse, they can learn in the flow of work and access learning at the point of need. It also means that for mobile-optimized eLearning, they can learn on-the-go. This level of accessibility is much more convenient for learners and encourages higher engagement rates with courses – a win-win for instructional designers and learners alike.
  • Personalization Instructional designers have been finding increasing success the more they can personalize the learning experience for the end user. Many organizations are investing resources in developing personalized learning paths , activities, and assessments. 
  • Flexibility The whole world has sped up in terms of how quickly information is generated, exchanged, and updated. eLearning allows instructional designers to keep pace with these changes in a much more flexible way than other traditional methods.
  • Trackability While feedback for classroom-style instruction is often limited to manually filling in physical feedback forms, eLearning provides a lot more insight into the success of course design and the engagement rates of learners. This level of feedback allows instructional designers to strategize more effectively on course design and adjust according to realtime feedback.

Instructional Design Trends

As instructional designers seek to meet the continually evolving demands of the modern learner, several instructional design trends have emerged as answers to roadblocks commonly experienced in corporate training development.

Microlearning

Microlearning is any learning experience in which the content takes between 2-10 minutes for the learner to consume. 

Its popularity stems from the fact that learners are more pressed for time and distracted than they have ever been before. By providing learning in bite-size microlearning courses, employees can fit training around their jobs rather than the other way around.

It also allows employees to learn in the flow of work, so they can learn what they need, at the point of need.

Learn More About Microlearning

Download this free ebook for a microlearning strategy you can start implementing today.

Case Study:

How Solenis Streamlined Instructional Design to Create 1,000+ eLearning Modules

Learn how Solenis used rapid instructional design and enhanced collaboration with SMEs to revolutionize the generation and distribution of their training.

Mobile Learning

Following the trend of meeting learners where they are, mobile learning allows users to access courses from the endpoint of their choosing. It’s another example of how instructional design has adapted to fit the needs of the modern lifestyle and work schedule. 

With mobile learning, users can access courses from home, in transit, or outside of regular working hours. Savvy instructional designers can also ensure the way they deploy these courses is more “native” to the mobile experience and similar in design to other apps that employees use every day.

Gamification

A major challenge for instructional designers with such an impatient and distracted workforce is learner engagement. Most people are used to doing some kind of mandatory compliance training in one form or another. But learning and development teams often struggle to ensure employees are taking advantage of other learning opportunities available to them.

Gamification is when game-design is applied to traditionally “non-game” activities, such as learning. The theory can be applied to learning activities such as incorporating rounds, stages or levels, simulations, the collection of items of value, the gaining of points, winning or losing, or a race against the clock. 

Blended Learning

The term “blended learning” comes from the practice of combining traditional instructor-led training in a classroom setting with online learning and independent study. This style of learning is common to both the education and corporate sectors, but the term “ blended learning ” is often found in the corporate learning environment.

It’s widely agreed that blended learning is made up of three core components:

  • In-person training activities facilitated by an instructor
  • Online learning materials (including online courses)
  • Structured independent learning guided by content in the online arena and skills developed during the instructor-led portion

The blended approach can often start with a more substantial focus on in-person training, and be followed up by more independent learning afterward once the core concepts have taken root.

The Instructional Designer's Toolbelt

From planning to design to deployment, a lot is involved for instructional designers to create a course and deliver it to learners. With each step in the process, different instructional design software and tools are needed. 

Learning Design System

The front end of instructional design requires a lot of planning and collaboration. Like most business functions, this was traditionally done by learning and development teams over email, spreadsheets and word documents. The Learning Design System was developed to address the bottlenecks created during the planning and development phase of instructional design.

The software helps to standardize and automate processes around:

  • Training intake
  • Collaboration (both internally on the L&D team and with other stakeholders such as Subject Matter Experts)
  • Standardizing course design through templates and built-in best practices in adult learning theory
  • Storyboarding and rapid prototyping

Project Management

Corporate training teams rarely stand in an individual silo in today’s agile business world. Extensive collaboration is often needed with external vendors and internal stakeholders. As the demand for training increases, it’s imperative for L&D to have a centralized view of all their ongoing projects and activities.

Project management software keeps instructional designers on track and aligned with each other and with objectives. Many project management tools available also integrate seamlessly with other popular software, making the transition as seamless as possible.

Authoring Tools

Authoring tools are software that has pre-programmed elements designed for developing interactive multimedia and creating digital content. Many authoring tools have been developed specifically for elearning content creation so instructional designers can build interactive elearning courses. 

Authoring tools for elearning have also been built to enable specific outputs that are needed to deploy courses to other software such as Learning Management Systems. Output types for elearning authoring tools include SCORM and HTML5.

Popular authoring tools for instructional designers include Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline 360, Elucidat, and Camtasia Studio 8.

Content curation in instructional design

In recent years, many L&D teams are shifting focus away from content creation, and towards content curation . This involves instructional designers selectively choosing a stock of resources, both internal and external, to present to learners rather than focusing on brand new content every time a learning opportunity is presented.

learning management system

The Learning Management System (LMS)

A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software system or platform where elearning courses can be deployed, tracked, reported on, and delivered to learners. LMS’s vary wildly in the types of features and functionality they deliver, but the core of it all is to deliver completed elearning courses to the end user: the learner.

It’s been predicted in recent years that the LMS may become obsolete in the near future as instructional design software and technology continues to evolve. But experts are divided on this, and it certainly seems that the LMS won’t be disappearing any time soon.

The LMS is one of the most important purchases the learning and development team makes because it’s how the learners themselves will interact with your online course. The functionalities of your LMS can dictate a lot about how you design learning content. Of all learning technologies, the LMS provides the most scope and choice. Popular vendors include TalentLMS, Docebo, Adobe Captivate Prime, Litmos, Lessonly, and Workday.

Most learning technology adheres to one of two main standards so that content can easily be deployed from design and development tools to the LMS. These standards are known as SCORM and xAPI.

What is SCORM?

SCORM stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model. It’s a collection of specifications and standardized approaches to how web-based elearning products are built and formatted. 

SCORM is currently the most widely adopted elearning standard in the industry. The protocol allows elearning content and programs to work together. For example, an elearning course might be built in an authoring tool and be seamlessly passed on to a Learning Management System for delivery to learners because they both compatible with SCORM.

What is xAPI?

xAPI is short for Experience API. It’s also known as Tin Can API. It was created as a successor to SCORM, which has certain limitations. xAPI makes it possible to collect a lot more data about a much wider range of learning experiences, both online and offline.

The xAPI protocol means that data and records about learners can be easily stored, retrieved, and shared across various platforms. Records collected and stored are referred to as activity statements which are then aggregated and stored in a Learning Record Store (LRS).

The advantage of xAPI over SCORM is being able to capture information about a wide range of activities and capturing offline learning moments, too. It gives L&D a much more comprehensive set of data and information to work with when analyzing their learning programmes. 

Training in the Flow of Work: How Solenis's "Learn It Now" Modules Delivered Award-Winning Results

Watch the recording of Thomas Bernard, Global Learning Leader at Solenis, and Kristy Sadler, CMO at Synapse, to learn how Solenis built an innovative, award-winning learning strategy.

Learning Experience Platform (LEP)

One of the key trends in learning and development right now is the push to personalize learning experiences for the individual user as much as possible.

A Learning Experience Platform (LEP) is software that is designed to provide personalized learning content and learning pathways for employees by consolidating lots of different learning resources. It’s usually used by large enterprises and leverages social learning and networking as well as personalization to provide a total learning experience. 

Unlike a traditional LMS, the LEP puts control back into the hands of the learner as they can choose what they would like to engage with on the platform. Popular vendors of Learning Experience Platforms include Degreed, Pathgather, Edcast, and Cornerstone.

The Future of Instructional Design

Artificial intelligence in instructional design.

While many would argue that instructional design and learning and development have been a little late to the party, there’s no arguing with the fact that technology is finally starting to make serious advancements in how we design and deliver learning experiences. 

ai and instructional design infographic

For learners:

Learners are becoming ever more impatient in today’s digital world. People are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information they must process on a daily basis. This tidal wave of information has made them far more selective about what they choose to process, and it affects their attention span for learning experiences, too. Learners today want highly relevant, bite-sized learning experiences that help them with their day-to-day performance.

That’s where Artificial Intelligence in elearning comes into play. AI has the potential (and has already started) to shape highly personalized learning experiences through recommendation engines, similar to Netflix or ecommerce product recommendations. In a learning environment, AI can suggest resources or experiences that are specific to the learner’s role, experience level, and performance issues. It can monitor their profession and automate the process of moving an employee through the hierarchy of learning.

This level of personalization means learners are presented with the right training at the right time for them. It reduces frustration at being put through courses that are not relevant or material that is too easy or too difficult. Ultimately, the end result will be learners that are more engaged and training that is more effective.

For instructional designers:

AI has the potential to change the way instructional designers develop, design, and deploy learning experiences.

Currently, many processes undertaken by instructional designers are still highly time-consuming and manual despite the vast array of learning technology already available. Artificial Intelligence has the potential to automate aspects of tasks like training needs analysis, course content development, and other instructional design processes. Much like the recommendation engines that are personalizing the learning experience, AI can automate a lot of the processes around learning objectives, content selection and assessments based on adult learning theory.

Adaptive learning

Adaptive learning is the use of technology to create personalized learning experiences online through Learning Experience Platforms or Learning Management Systems. Adaptive learning is becoming an increasingly popular trend in corporate training as the tools and technology to achieve it become available. In fact, a report by Docebo found that 33% of learning leaders plan to focus on adaptive learning in 2020. 

Adaptive learning is comprised of three core functionalities:

  • Content: which learning activities (text, graphics, video, etc.) are presented to the learner
  • Sequence: the order in which content or modules are presented to the learner
  • Guidance: achieving optimal learning outcomes through a personalized learning path that considers the individual learning style and level of difficulty

It has been decades since the benefits of “one on one” teaching and the benefits of paying individual attention to learners were realized. Adaptive learning aims to transmit that one-to-one teaching concept to an elearning environment. The “instructor” (algorithms) present a similarly personalized and optimized learning experience to that of a tutor and an individual student. This is mostly achieved through the constant collection of data and feedback so that the technology can adapt based on learner responses to tasks and assessments.

working with SMEs

Working with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

instructional designers and subject matter experts

The problem with working with SMEs

Despite the necessity of working with SMEs , frustrations can build very quickly for instructional designers when working with them on a training project. There are three main factors that contribute to the difficulty of designing a course with a SME:

1. SMEs have no knowledge of instructional design

Instructional designers have studied adult learning theory, cognitive behaviour, and educational psychology. They have been taught best practices in how to plan, structure, and design a course to achieve optimal results for the learners. Subject Matter Experts often have absolutely no experience in this, so when it comes to designing a course together, objectives can be misunderstood and lead to clashes over decisions about the course.

2. Poor collaboration processes

When working on a training development project with SMEs, collaboration is key. But collaboration is more than sitting around a table in a meeting room once a month. It’s about accountability, deadlines, and working from the same playbook. Part of the problem is that collaboration software hasn’t caught up to the needs of instructional designers who are sometimes trying to coordinate multiple groups of SMEs over multiple training development projects. 

3. SMEs are busy with their own roles

Even SMEs who are committed to training projects can find it difficult to dedicate the time needed. And for those who are reluctant contributors, it can be even harder to pin them down. But the fact is, SMEs are taking time out of busy day-to-day schedules and primary duties to help out with training projects while for the instructional designer, completing training projects is the primary objective.

How to manage Subject Matter Experts

1. the kick-off meeting.

Every training project should start with a kick-off meeting before diving straight into “this is what the corporate training team needs from you.” It’s important to make SMEs feel like they are part of the project and the decision making because this is how you will get them to commit and provide higher quality work.

2. Create a project charter

Setting out expectations is a hugely important part of successful collaboration in any setting. Define a project charter that sets out the objectives, risks and benefits, and expectations for all stakeholders involved. 

3. Define a shared goal

The goal or objectives of your project as defined in the Project Charter should outline an organizational benefit that is valuable to both the instructional designer and the SME. Defining a shared goal is crucial for earning buy-in and commitment from your SME, not just in the beginning but for the duration.

4. Set out roles and responsibilities

Part of setting expectations is assigning roles and responsibilities for everyone involved in the training project. These roles and responsibilities set expectations, but they can also be referred back to if any disagreements arise throughout the duration of the project.

This is particularly important if it’s the first time your SME has worked with the training department to develop training. 

5. Demonstrate Value

If you have a SME who is reluctant to be involved in the project, try to highlight the value of this experience for their own professional development. By collaborating on the creation of training, they are seen as a leader and expert amongst their peers. Hopefully seeing some more personal benefits to their contribution will motivate them to commit to the project.

6. Get them involved from the very beginning

Before any decisions are made, bring the SME into the conversation.  The SME will feel like an owner in the project rather than a contributor, encouraging a higher level of commitment, accountability and involvement. For difficult SMEs, it can help to mitigate any objetions they may have been inclined to raise. By involving them in the discussion from the beginning, they are obliged to take equal ownership on decisions made for the project.

7. Don't dismiss their concerns

Some decisions may be obvious to you as an instructional designer, but don’t be surprised if you hear objections, hesitation, or concern from your Subject Matter Expert. They are looking at the course and the content from an entirely different persepctive, and it’s a perspective that may be worth listening to when they voice concern.

If you still disagree, don’t be dismissive of their concerns or their lack of instructional design knowledge. Ensure your SME feels listened to and valued at all times throughout the project. After all, the training course would not be possible without them.

instructional design meeting

How to Scale Instructional Design Efforts

With speed of business ever increasing, corporate training teams are having a hard time keeping up with demand. Check out this free ebook for actionable tips on scaling your instructional design process.

How can SMEs design the courses themselves?

In a perfect world, learning professionals could hand off the majority of training projects and course design directly to SMEs. While SMEs will always need some form of guidance from instructional designers, there are scenarios and tools that can enable them to contribute a lot more than simply “data dumping” their knowledge to a designer.

Course Templates

There are fundamentals of course design that are second nature to instructional designers but are like a foreign language to SMEs. Things like learning objectives, requirements gathering, and hierarchical learning models can be built into templates for SMEs. This lessens the pressure on L&D to handhold SMEs through a course design process.

A Learning Design System guides SMEs through course design with built-in best practices in adult learning theory and guidance for SMEs on building courses. Instructional designers can also assign tasks and collaborate with SMEs directly on the platform, keeping all communication in one place.

Train the Trainer

Instructor-led training (ILT) still makes up a huge proportion of corporate training courses, but the same level of attention should be paid to the instructional design methodology used to build ILT. In an ILT environment, L&D often run “train the trainer” sessions so that SMEs can depart their knowledge effectively in a classroom setting.

It's Time to Change How You Design Training

learning activities designing

Resources for L&D Professionals

blog post title: Starbucks and ELB Learning on Creating a Flexible, Outcome-Focused L&D Playbook, with an image in the background of two people writing on a piece of paper.

Starbucks and ELB Learning on Creating a Flexible, Outcome-Focused L&D Playbook

On Thursday, February 22, 2024, at 2 pm ET, Cognota hosted a webinar, Elevate Your L&D Strategy: Crafting a Dynamic Playbook for Today’s Challenges to

learning activities designing

Leveraging Cognota’s Capacity Insights for Unprecedented Success in L&D

In L&D, strategic decisions are the roadmap to success. The introduction of Capacity Insights in Cognota unveils a transformative journey, not just through data points,

learning activities designing

5 Cognota LearnOps Resolutions To Kick Off 2024

With a new year beginning, teams and individuals are setting all sorts of resolutions. Project Planning, understanding your team’s capacity and achieving organizational alignment are

blog post title: Starbucks and ELB Learning on Creating a Flexible, Outcome-Focused L&D Playbook, with an image in the background of two people writing on a piece of paper.

LearnOps ®️

L&D Resources

Cognota Resources

  • © Cognota, Inc 2024

learning activities designing

Privacy Overview

  • Introduction
  • Part I. Instructional Design Practice
  • Understanding
  • 1. Becoming a Learning Designer
  • 2. Designing for Diverse Learners
  • 3. Conducting Research for Design
  • 4. Determining Environmental and Contextual Needs
  • 5. Conducting a Learner Analysis
  • 6. Problem Framing
  • 8. Documenting Instructional Design Decisions
  • 9. Generating Ideas
  • 10. Instructional Strategies
  • 11. Instructional Design Prototyping Strategies
  • 12. Design Critique
  • 13. The Role of Design Judgment and Reflection in Instructional Design
  • 14. Instructional Design Evaluation
  • 15. Continuous Improvement of Instructional Materials
  • Part II. Instructional Design Knowledge
  • Sources of Design Knowledge
  • 16. Learning Theories
  • 17. The Role of Theory in Instructional Design
  • 18. Making Good Design Judgments via the Instructional Theory Framework
  • 19. The Nature and Use of Precedent in Designing
  • 20. Standards and Competencies for Instructional Design and Technology Professionals
  • Instructional Design Processes
  • 21. Design Thinking
  • 22. Robert Gagné and the Systematic Design of Instruction
  • 23. Designing Instruction for Complex Learning
  • 24. Curriculum Design Processes
  • 25. Agile Design Processes and Project Management

Designing Instructional Activities

  • 26. Designing Technology-Enhanced Learning Experiences
  • 27. Designing Instructional Text
  • 28. Audio and Video Production for Instructional Design Professionals
  • 29. Using Visual and Graphic Elements While Designing Instructional Activities
  • 30. Simulations and Games
  • 31. Designing Informal Learning Environments
  • 32. The Design of Holistic Learning Environments
  • 33. Measuring Student Learning
  • Design Relationships
  • 34. Working With Stakeholders and Clients
  • 35. Leading Project Teams
  • 36. Implementation and Instructional Design
  • Author Biographies
  • Translations

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Tools and Settings

Questions and Tasks

Citation and Embed Code

learning activities designing

Instructional designers have developed a large number of practical techniques for designing specific kinds of learning activities. The chapters in this section focus on tips, principles, or other considerations important for making the activities they design as effective as possible.

This content is provided to you freely by EdTech Books.

Access it online or download it at https://edtechbooks.org/id/designing_instructio .

Center for Teaching Innovation

Resource library.

  • Learning Strategies Center
  • UDL in Higher Education
  • Student Disability Services' Faculty & Staff Resources for Teaching Students with Disabilities
  • UDL Online Video Case Studies
  • Universal Design & Technology

Universal Design for Learning

Universal design for learning (UDL) is a teaching approach that works to accommodate the needs and abilities of all learners and eliminates unnecessary hurdles in the learning process. This means developing a flexible learning environment in which information is presented in multiple ways, students engage in learning in a variety of ways, and students are provided options when demonstrating their learning. 

UDL is similar to universal instructional design and universal design for instruction. All three advocate for accessible and inclusive instructional approaches that meet the needs and abilities of all learners.     

Why Use UDL?

  • Incorporating universal design principles enhances an  inclusive learning environment .
  • Designing a course to accommodate a wider variety of needs may eliminate potential learning barriers or unnecessary learning obstacles. If a course can be designed at the onset to do this, then why not?
  • Providing students with multiple means of perceiving, comprehending, and expressing their learning allows students to engage with the material in a way that most benefits them, and also encourages students to engage with material to improve in areas in which their skills are not as strong.  

Considerations for UDL

  • Provide Options for Perception - Based on the premise that learners access information differently, this principle means providing flexible and multiple ways to present information. For example, using PowerPoint as a visual supplement to your lecture.
  • Provide Options for Expression - Since learners vary in their abilities to demonstrate their learning in different ways, this principle means providing flexible and multiple ways to allow students to express their knowledge or demonstrate their skills. For example, providing students an option of writing a final exam or submitting a final assignment. 
  • Provide Options for Comprehension - Students are motivated to learn for different reasons and vary in the types of learning activities that keep them engaged. This third principle means providing multiple ways for engaging in course activities. For example, engaging students in both group work activities and individual work, as opposed to engaging students only in individual work.

Remember that providing choices does not mean changing course expectations (e.g., if your course  learning outcomes includes being able to communicate in writing, students need to demonstrate their learning through a written assignment).

Getting Started with UDL

  • If you have already designed a course, reflect on how it is going. What current course activities, methods of instruction, and assessments are working well? What is your teaching style and what are your students’ learning modalities? Ask yourself which students would likely do well in your class and which students might struggle.
  • Could you offer more flexibility in the way you present content, the way students engage in learning in your course, and the way they are assessed?
  • Have students choose from a selected bank of assignment topics or at the beginning of the semester, allow students to determine what percentage of their grade can be dependent on certain assessment options. 
  • Check in with your students to see how things are going. Conduct a  mid-semester evaluation , and/or  evaluate how productive your classroom climate is .
  • As with any teaching strategy, reflect on how it went. Did it work for you? For your students? Were students able to attain the course learning outcomes? Make necessary adjustments for your next semester.

See more on  UDL principles and how they can be applied , or use a  course accessibility checklist  to check how accessible your course is.

References 

Burgstahler, S., & Cory, R. (2008).  Universal design in higher education: From principles to practice . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Rose, D. H., Harbour, W. A., Johnston, C. S., Daley, S. G., & Abarbanell, L. (2006). Universal design for learning in postsecondary education: Reflections on principles and their applications.  Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability , 19 (2), 135-151.

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Flexible Teaching

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  • Step-by-step
  • Step 3: Instructional activities
  • Teaching in socially distanced classrooms
  • Models for Alternating Cohort Courses
  • Options for Online Instructional Activities
  • Choosing between synchronous versus asynchronous methods
  • Capturing video and audio

Step 3: Plan your instructional activities

Once you have made headway in determining what assessments will work in your flexible or online course, think about how you will design your instructional activities (or your students' learning activities) to give students the knowledge and skills they will need to perform well. Stay centered on the skills and concepts you want students to acquire through those activities, and how they will help students suceed on the assessments.

Begin by reflecting on:

  • What knowledge and skills will students need for successful performance on my assessments? 
  • What types of practice and feedback would promote students’ learning of the needed knowlege and skills?
  • Is there anything you need to break into steps, clarify, or “uncover?

​Once you have identified the types of practice and learning experiences you would like to implement, you will need to address how to implement them online and in flexible ways. As suggested in the  introductory section of this guidebook ,  design   each course element for an online environment , even though you may plan to implement that component in person. That way, you already have a way for students who miss class for a day or a larger part of a semester to complete the work. Use online activities to "book-end" the in-person activities so that students who do have to miss class have a ready-made way of being involved in the discussion.  The upfront time to plan in this way will save you time and grief later in the semester. It is almost always easier to transfer online course material to a physical class session than to transfer classroom material online, especially at the last minute. The goal is to design one, flexible class, rather than two classes offered simultaneously! 

General considerations

Reenvisioning learning activities for online.

Online teaching requires a different mindset from classroom teaching, but done well, it can be just as effective and engaging as in-person teaching. It involves thinking about teaching and learning in a slightly different way.

  • Online options:  This page provides suggestions about a variety of learning activities that can be carried out online and give students practice using and applying concepts and skills.
  • Group activities: And this page provides guidance for implementing and scaffolding online group activities . 

How do I decide whether to use real-time online activities?

This page here  describes the pros and cons of synchronous and asynchronous online activties, and provides recommendations for deciding the best balance for your course. 

Deciding what to do with in-person time

Planning class time will involve thinking through the sorts of learning activities that can be carried out in a physically distanced classroom and the relationship between face-to-face activities and the learning activities completed online. 

What sorts of learning activities will work best in a physically distanced classroom?

With students in masks and physically distanced from one another, it may be difficult to envision how to make use of your in-person time with students. Here is some information from a  simulation of socially distanced classrooms,  as part of a video shoot. This video on the Protect KU website  illustrates what campus activity and student and instructor movement in and out of classrooms will look like this fall. 

We are currently running experiments of specific instructional practices in classrooms. There are ways to use the structure and immediacy of class time even under these conditons.  Based on these principles and the initial simulation, consider the following types of activities: 

  • Small group discussion
  • Reporting out on work completed individually or in groups
  • Student collaboration via shared virtual workspace, such as Teams, a Wiki, or Google doc
  • Rapport and community building activities
  • Demos followed by discussion
  • Polling and peer learning/discussion
  • Students presenting and reviewing each others' work 

Organizing alternating cohort schedules

Some in-person courses are organized around an hybrid alternating cohort schedule in order to meet social distancing requirements. For instance, for a T/TH schedule, one cohort of student attends class in-person on Tuesday and the other cohort attends in-person on Thursday.  In addition to deciding what to do with your in-person time with students, you will also need to decide what students will do on the alternate (online) days. These four questions can help you think through the issues:

  • How will I use my face-to-face time with students?
  • What is the relationship between the face-to-face activities and the learning activities completed online?   
  • What will my students do on the alternate (online) days? Students may be expected to carry out online activities during class time (e.g., working in groups), or complete online learning activities asynchronously.  
  • What will I do on the alternating days? Will the in-person class period be the same for both cohorts?

Models for Organizing Hybrid Courses with Alternating Cohorts

Models vary on two major dimensions: (1) HOW students participate in instructional activities on the online day (joining the in-person class session for the other cohort, interacting with a GTA or discussion leader, interacting with other peers in their same cohort, or working on learning activities on their own) and (2) WHEN that participation is scheduled (either asynchronously or at the regularly scheduled class time). These dimensions, in turn, have implications for whether the same instructional activities are carried out in each in-person class session or whether each class session moves to new activities and content. The following models describe different ways of handling students' online learning time. 

Model 1 (Traditional Hybrid Model). Asynchronous Online Activities . In this model, on their "online day," students complete asynchronous online learning activities, and attend class in-person on the classroom day.  On the online day, students participate in online or out-of-class learning activities (e.g., through Blackboard, Teams, or another platform), such as discussions, reading, watching videos, or collaborative work.

  • Most often (in the Traditional hybrid course model), the in-person and online activities are designed to serve different functions, and in-person activities are repeated for each cohort. Designing the in-person class period to be the same for all cohorts may be an easier approach than having one cohort do the same thing online that another cohort does in person. This approach will also better enable you to to leverage the time that you do have with your students in-person for the activities that are most ideally suited to that context.
  • In-person learning activities can be easily replicated online (e.g., discussion), OR
  • You ask online and in-person students interact virtually around work or reflections produced in their modality (e.g., a jigsaw approach in which in-person students post major take-aways from a class session, and online students generate take-aways from their asynchronous work)

Model 2. Synchronous Online Activities. Like the most common form of Model 1, the activities of the classroom day are the same across all cohorts. Unlike Model 1, however, you use the scheduled class time on the alternate day to structure your students' out of classroom time. During regularly scheduled class time, students work together on learning activities (e.g., using their own meetings via Zoom, Teams, or phone), but do not interact with the instructor or classmates in other cohort who are concurrently meeting in-person in the classroom. 

  • This model is ideal for team-based or collaborative learning and group projects because it leverages the common class time to make it easy for students to collaborate outside of the classroom environment.  
  • Keep in mind, however, that these group activities will go much better if you provide guidance and coaching to scaffold this work. For example, ask students to develop a plan for how they will work together in real-time, and consider assigning students roles for the work that rotate each week.  
  • Students could also be expected to work through learning activities on their own during the scheduled class time. In this case, flexibility is reduced, whereas the structure to students’ independent coursework is enhanced. Might be ideal for classes that serve less experienced students (e.g., freshmen).

Model 3. Synchronous Discussion, Lab, or Supplemental Instruction . During regularly scheduled class time, students interact (online) with a GTA or an undergraduate peer mentor or learning assistant, other discussion group leader, by participating in a separate online live session for their cohort. This could include a discussion session, a "lab," a drop-in Q&A or office hours session, or one-on-one consultations between students and instructiontal staff. In this model:

  • In-person and online sessions serve different function.
  • In-person instructional activities are repeated for each cohort.
  • Instructors should also consider  the pros and cons of synchronous online activities  (live stream sessions) to help them decide whether/how to use this model.   

Model 4. Synchronous Remote. In this model all students are on the same schedule in terms of core learning activities, but one cohort participates in the activities in person and the other online (either synchronously, such as zooming in for a lecture or discussion). The modality (in-person or online) then switches the following class period. During regularly scheduled class time, students use Zoom or Teams to join the in-person class remotely. In this model:

  • Each class meeting involves new content/ instructional activities.
  • Online sessions treated as remote replacement for in-person sessions.
  • Instructors should consider general  pros and cons of synchronous online activities  (live stream sessions) to help them decide whether/how to use this model.
  • A benefit of this approach is that all students will be on the same learning schedule (but not class attendance schedule)
  • It is difficult to ensure that there is equivalence in the learning experience and impact for students participating in-person and online.  It was quite difficult to create an environment in which the remote students could track what was happening in the class (particularly in larger classrooms where microphones will not pick up comments and questions from in-person students) and participate in the class.  
  • It prevents instructors from being able to use the most effective approaches suited to that context (whether in-person or online). Our verious efforts to make the online students included as full participants in the in-person class session (e.g., having in-person students on Zoom as well) ended up eliminating much of the value-added for being in the classroom. In the end we felt that the in-person class would be far more effective and engaging without worrying about participation of a remote cohort, and that the remote students could have a much more effective and engaging experience if their learning experience were fully online (either synchronously or asynchronously- see Models 1-3).
  • One approach is for the instructor to invite online students to "join" an in-person class meeting remotely, but to to create parallel online learning activities that could be the primary form of participation for the online cohort (e.g.,see model 1 above), rather than relying on remote access to the in-person class session to help students meet objectives for that day. 

​Have you developed an approach that doesn't fit one of these categories that you'd like to share? Email us at [email protected] with your plan!

Frequently asked questions about alternating cohorts: 

  • If a student misses the class meeting of their cohort, can they attend on the other day, if there is room? Yes. Instructors have flexibility in allowing students to temporarily swap cohorts, but they are responsible for ensuring that there is enough capacity in the room. You will also need to come up with a set of procedures for how and when students can request attendance on the alternate day. 

University of Tasmania

Teaching & Learning

Examples of learning activities.

The teacher's fundamental task is to get students to engage in learning activities that are likely to result in achieving [the intended learning] outcomes. It is helpful to remember that what the student does is actually more important that what the teacher does. (Schuell, 1986, p.429)

Every learning activity in your unit should be intentional , meaningful and useful .

As noted on the Session Outcomes page , each learning activity in your unit should be aligned to the unit ILOs, as well as to the more specific learning outcomes of each session or module that you teach. The intent of the activity is then clear to both you and your students.

It is equally important that each activity is meaningful , and ensures student development and advancement through the unit. Activities should build on previous activities and avoid being repetitive, they should enable students to engage with and develop their skills, knowledge and understandings in different ways. Meaningful activities engage students in active, constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative ways.

Useful learning activities are ones where the student is able to take what they have learnt from engaging with the activity and use it in another context, or for another purpose. For example, students are able to directly apply the skills or knowledge they acquired to an assessment task, or to the next activity in your unit.

The activity types provided below are by no means an exhaustive list, but will help you in thinking through how best to design and deliver high impact learning experiences for your students in your unit.

Content Focus (and Interaction)

Whether the learning outcomes for a session or module include declarative or functioning knowledge, almost all of them will be supported in some way by the presentation of information to students.

Activities which involve student interaction with content can include listening to and/or watching a live or recorded talk, engaging with a written or visual text, engaging with multimedia, or a combination of these. Typically, students are more likely to retain information presented in these ways if they are asked to interact with the material in some way, which is why it is useful to ask or invite questions, or include another activity type after every 5 or 15 minute 'chunk' of information.

Example: Live Lectorial (Online or On campus)

Provide information orally, supported by slides, in 4 to 7 minute blocks, interspersed with interactions such as asking students to respond to a related question. For example, ask the students a question that requires them to apply, summarise, explain or identify etc. an important aspect of the information just presented. After asking the question, wait 10 to 15 seconds before asking for volunteers, or calling on a randomly selected student to respond. (It may be useful to provide a visual clue for students identifying that after posing the question you would like to them to consider a response and remain silent for the designated amount of time.) After a student has responded to the question, call on another student to summarise the first student's response. Alternatively, if the first response was not completely accurate, invite the second student to respond to the first student's answer (e.g., "[name] what do you think about that - would you agree?").   Alternatively, students might work through problems, case studies, calculations, etc, individually or in small groups following short sections of content delivery.

This activity would be particularly relevant for supporting student progress towards learning outcomes with declarative knowledge .

Example: Assigned Reading/text

Provide students with access to a text (e.g., journal article, blog, multimedia presentation). Accompany the text with a number of questions which will help guide students' focus as they engage with the text. The questions could be provided for personal reflection, they could be addressed further in a subsequent synchronous session (online or on-campus), they could be presented in the form of an online quiz (weighted or unweighted) or survey, or they could be required as part of an asynchronous activity (online) among other options and possibilities.

The questions posed, and how students are asked to respond to them will be dependent upon what the ILOs require students to do. For example, a unit with an ILO that requires students to ' identify ' might have questions that highlight the relevant aspects, or which require students to identify the key ideas in a reading. For a unit with an ILO for students to ' evaluate ', however, the questions might ask student to list advantages and disadvantages, or to compare and contrast different approaches noted in the text(s).

Example: Multimedia Content in MyLO

Use a MyLO Content File (HTML) to pose one to four questions, in text. Ask students to record their responses in a linked, editable MyLO survey. Below the questions and the survey link, embed a short video (from YouTube, MyMedia, Vimeo etc) that contains information answering the posed questions. Ask students to return to their survey answers (with a link) and update them with the new knowledge they have.

The questions posed will be dependent upon the unit and module/session learning outcomes. For example, ILOs that require students to ' identify ' might have questions that highlight the relevant aspects, or which require students to identify the key ideas in the video. For ILOs that require ' critical reflection ', however, the questions might ask students to complete SWOT components, or to present perspectives from a variety of stakeholders, fo example.

Interactivity (with Others) Focus

The 'social presence' of a student in a unit has been found to correlate positively with both their achievement of learning outcomes, and their perception of the learning in a unit (Richardson & Swan, 2003). Peer relationships, informal support structures, and teacher-student interactions/relationships all contribute to a student's social presence in a unit. Therefore, including learning activities that foster open communication and group cohesion (as ways of fostering social presence) as well as providing opportunities for active learning are important in every unit.

Activities that focus on or include interaction with others can support student development of a range of learning outcomes, inclusive of declarative and functioning knowledge. All of these examples could be used in either online or on campus environments.

Example: Facilitated synchronous discussion

A set of questions are provided to students for consideration prior to a scheduled session. In small groups of 10-20, the teacher facilitates student sharing of responses to the questions, and building upon those responses. Further questions for consideration might be introduced during the session, aimed at furthering the thinking and analysis generated from the discussion.

N.B., Facilitating the sharing of responses is most effective when done skillfully. Therefore, it is likely that familiarising yourself with literature about this will enhance the learning of your students.

Example: Jigsaw collaborative information sharing

A cohesive set of information is separated into 4 or 5 smaller parts. For example, a written article separated by its paragraphs, a report separated by each section, a video separated into shorter clips. Students are organised into small groups, and each one is provided with one of the smaller parts of information. Students work together to understand the information they are provided with. They also discuss and rehearse how to share this knowledge with others who do not have the information. Then, new groups are formed, each being made up of a single student from each of the original groups. In these new groups, each 'expert' student shares their knowledge with the rest of the group who may ask questions to clarify meaning.

The teacher may then pose questions for the groups to answer, ask groups to complete a task that demonstrates their understanding, provide their own summary, or take questions from the groups to help solidify understandings.

Example: Group Assignments

Students are organised into smaller groups of three or four for the entire semester, a week, a fortnight... Each group has an assigned task, and each member an assigned role. (The organisation of groups, and assignment of roles can be managed either by the teacher or the students.) Discussion boards are provided for each of the assigned roles (e.g., project manager, schedule and records manager, presentation manager, researcher) so that these students can share ideas and check understandings with one another to then take back to their group). Opportunities are provided for each group to share their product with the rest of the class, through, for example, an in-class presentation (using web conferencing for online presentation), or a peer-assessment activity (facilitated online or in-class) where each group assesses one another's work using a rubric.

Critical Thinking

Activities that provide students with opportunities to think about or use knowledge and information in new and different ways will support their development of critical thinking skills - one of the main selling points of a university education. Often critical thinking activities can follow on from other learning activities, after students have received feedback from the initial activity.

Example: Response to an assigned text

Students are initially asked to identify the key ideas in an assigned text (written, audio, video), and share their understanding with a sub-set of the class (e.g., during an on campus (or online) 'tutorial', or on a discussion board). To extend this to a critical thinking activity, once the initial discussion on the content of the text is completed, students are then asked to critique the text based on a provided set of criteria. The criteria could focus on the validity of the assertions made, and their relevance and applicability to other topics covered in the unit and specified situations and scenarios. The critiques could be presented and discussed orally, or initially posted to a discussion board for further analysis and use in subsequent learning activities.

Example: Digital story development

Students (as individuals, pairs, or in groups) are provided with a scenario or case study which they must analyse. They prepare a 5 minute digital story that explains what the relevant issues are, including the stakeholders, the options, the impacts and consequences etc (as relevant to your discipline and context). These digital stories are shared on MyLO, and used in subsequent sessions for class analysis, for peer-feedback or assessment, for oral advocacy where the author(s) of the digital story respond to questions about the content, defending and explaining their reasoning, or for formal assessment and feedback from the teacher, among other uses.

Asking students to produce something can be an effective way of assisting them to engage with ideas and concepts at the level you wish them to. It can be a way of facilitating 'deep' learning. Worth noting here, is that with the ubiquitousness of technology and its capabilities now, the requirement of production being predominantly written no longer exists, with the range of possible forms of production ever increasing, bounded only by your imaginations.

Example: Infographic

When students are learning about processes or procedures; dealing with statistics, numbers, and dates; learning about complex ideas with interactions on different levels; or something similar, you can ask students to produce an infographic to explain, describe, and visualise this information. The production of the infographic can be worked on by students outside of scheduled sessions, and should be shared with the whole class through MyLO. The infographics could also be used as a starting point for further analyses and/or discussions.

Example: Oral summary (+ written summary)

Students are each given a specific aspect of a topic, and asked to create a 4 minute oral explanation of it. The oral explanation is then shared with the other members of the class, either as a recording shared online, or through a live presentation during a scheduled session. This can work well when all the participating students are then asked to write a short summary of each of the aspects explained. These written summaries are then also shared with the class online. In addition to providing students with an opportunity to learn more about the aspects, this also provides you the teacher with useful feedback about the aspects which students have not understood as well as needed. This then enables you to plan for additional learning activities that focus on the less well understood concepts.

Example: One minute paper

During a lecture, or within a module on MyLO, ask students to stop and spend one minute (and no longer) responding to a key question about the topic being covered. Students then pass in their writing to the teacher.

The one minute paper can be written on a piece of paper, but works particularly well on campus when students are asked to submit it through the survey tool in MyLO. This makes the collection and reading of the papers easier for you the teacher, and makes it easier to analyse the responses and respond to them in the following scheduled session.

Problem Solving

Presenting students with a problem, scenario, case, challenge or design issue, which they are then asked to resolve, address, meet, or deal with provides students with a visible and clear reason for learning. If, in order to solve the problem, they are required to have knowledge, understandings and skills, that they don't currently have, they are likely to be motivated to gain them. The scale and extent of the problem, and the amount of scaffolding provided by you, the teacher, will need careful consideration and reference to the learning outcomes of the unit, module and/or session.

You may find John Savery's (2006) article Overview of Problem-based Learning: Definitions and Distinctions a valuable and useful read.

Example: Simulation

Students are provided with a scenario, and they then interact with people and/or machines who respond to their choices and actions as if in real life. After the simulation has ended, the student reflects on the consequences of their choices and actions, often in response to questions from their classmates or teacher(s).

Example: Case Study

Students, either individually or in groups, are provided with information about a person or organisation, and are assigned a role that is relevant to the case of the assigned person or organisation. The students must then analyse the case, and make recommendations to stakeholder(s), propose a solution, or present a design or plan related to the case.

What students are asked to do in relation to the case will depend on the discipline in which they are studying, and the unit's intended learning outcomes.

Example: Class Solution and Consequence

During a live lecture or tutorial, the teacher presents a scenario, and seeks responses from the class about possible approaches/responses to it. After collecting the responses (made verbally and recorded by the teacher, or sent using an audience response system such as MyLO surveys, clickers, or Lecture tools (which are currently in use across UTAS)), the teacher then asks for verbal responses about what the consequences might be for a selected answer. This continues as each of the main responses are analysed and the consequences considered.

Using effective questioning and discussion facilitation skills will enhance this sort of learning activity.

Reflection is an activity that supports the development of students' meta-cognition, that is, their understanding of how they think, learn, and understand. The process of reflection starts with the student thinking about what they already know and have experienced in relation to the topic being explored/learnt. This is followed by analysis of why the student thinks about the topic in the way they do, and what assumptions, attitudes and beliefs they have about, and bring to learning about the topic.

Stephen Brookfield has a number of useful publications about the use of reflection and reflective writing for learning and teaching which you may find useful, including: Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting (1987) ISBN 978-1-55542-055-0 , and  Teaching for Critical Thinking: Helping Students Question Their Assumptions (2011)  ISBN 978-0-470-88934-3 .

Example: Self-Assessment

After students have completed a learning activity or assessment task, provide them with a set of criteria to use to assess the quality of their work. Ask students to write down a comment about the quality of their work (process or product). Then, ask students to think about why they achieved that level of quality, and whether they could do something differently in the future to achieve a different/higher level of quality. Students may be asked to make a record of this reflection.

Example: Reflection on Learning

After students have received feedback on an early assessment task or learning activity, ask them to use the DIEP model (Boud, 1985) to write a reflection about their experience of completing the task or participating in the activity. Ask students to use the reflective writing process to assist them to replicate approaches that worked well for them, and/or to avoid approaches that did not help them to learn and perform well.

This focus would be most appropriate for students who are in their first year of study at university, and especially for those in their first semester.

Example: Prior Understanding

Towards the start of a new topic or module, present to students the name of the topic, and/or some key words of relevance to the new module. Ask students to reflect on what they currently think about this topic, how they feel about it, and why this might be the case. Ask students to predict what they will learn about, how they feel about that, and how they expect to feel about the experience of learning about it.

This can be useful to go back to towards the end of the module or topic, to ask students to reflect on if and how their feelings and understandings have changed.

Richardson, J. C., & Swan, K. (2003). Examining social presence in online courses in relation to students' perceived learning and satisfaction. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 7 (1), 68-88.

Schuell, T. J. (1986). Cognitive conceptions of learning.  Review of Educational Research ,  56 , 411-436.

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September 21, 2022

Learning Objectives vs. Learning Activities: Understanding the Key Components of Instructional Design

By [email protected].

Learning Objectives vs. Learning Activities: Understanding the Key Components of Instructional Design

Learning objectives are clear and specific statements that describe the desired outcome of a training or educational program. They define what learners should know or be able to do upon completion of the training. For instance, the learning objectives for sales professionals partaking in a sales training program should be: “To be able to correctly identify key product features and effectively communicate them to potential customers.”

On the other hand, learning activities are the methods and techniques used to achieve the learning objectives. These are the actual tasks or exercises that learners will engage in to acquire the desired knowledge or skills. For the sales training example, a learning activity could be a role-play exercise where learners practice presenting the product to a simulated customer.

In summary, learning objectives and learning activities are two essential components of effective training and education programs. Clear and specific learning objectives help learners understand what is expected of them upon completing a training course, while engaging learning activities provide opportunities for learners to practice knowledge and skills in order to fulfill the learning objectives.

Understanding the Difference Between Learning Objectives and Learning Activities

“A goal without a plan is just a wish” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

learning objectives and learning activities

Positive learning outcomes are the desired goal for any learning program. However, in order to ensure that learning happens, taking a structured approach to designing learning plans becomes essential. For example, learning objectives and learning activities play a role in making lessons engaging and fruitful. As a result, an unstructured or undefined learning objective will disengage learners as they aren’t helping the learner understand ‘the importance of training that they are undertaking’. Additionally, an unstructured learning activity will further confuse learners since it may not make sense in relation to what they are learning.

Learning objectives and learning activities might seem like two sides of the same coin. But they are also fairly different. In this article, we will discuss the learning objectives vs learning activities premise as well as understand the important difference of both.

The What and Why of Learning Objectives

Defining clear learning objectives is the first and perhaps “the” most important tenet for designing a great eLearning course. Learning objectives describe the goal of the learning program and define the skills that a learner must gain in order to complete the program. Additionally the learner must continue to display these skills post completing the program.

Only when you have clear learning objectives can you build a structured eLearning module. Also, knowing the learning objectives helps in designing great learning activities that make learning an engaging and interesting proposition.

At the same time, it should be mentioned that learning objectives and learning goals are not the same things.

Learning Objectives vs. Learning Activities: Understanding the Key Components of Instructional Design

While learning goals and learning objectives are related, they are not the same thing. Learning goals are broader, more general statements about what a learner will achieve through a course or program, while learning objectives are specific, measurable statements that define the knowledge or skills a learner will acquire through the learning experience.

Learning goals focus on the overall purpose and outcomes of a course or program, while learning objectives outline the specific steps and targets that must be achieved to reach those goals. Goals are often more abstract and broad, while objectives are more concrete and specific.

For example, a learning goal for a language course might be “to develop proficiency in speaking and writing in a foreign language.” Specific learning objectives to achieve that goal could include “to be able to conjugate irregular verbs in the present tense” or “to be able to write a 300-word essay in the target language.”

While both learning goals and objectives are important in defining the scope and purpose of a course or program, learning objectives are more specific and measurable statements that describe the desired outcome of the learning experience.

learning activities

The What and Why of Learning Activities

Learning activities are an essential component of any eLearning program and serve to support the achievement of learning objectives. Engaging and immersive learning activities promote better learning, while motivating learners to participate actively in the program. Learning activities also help to assess a learner’s existing knowledge on a given subject matter.

Incorporating learning activities into an eLearning program is crucial to transforming a dull or a cognitively demanding learning module into an interesting, easy to understand, and meaningful learning experience. There are numerous ways to incorporate learning activities that enhance the learning process and make it more enjoyable for learners.

To be effective, learning activities must first account for the experience level of the learners. Followed by identifying the learning objectives that a learner must achieve by using the learning activity. You also need to determine the optimal amount of time that learners must spend on each activity to achieve the desired objectives.

Using tools such as storytelling, gamification, virtual learning, augmented reality, etc. to create learning activities can promote better learning. These tools are effective at creating learning activities that reduce the cognitive load on the learners and promote better learning. However, when it comes to designing learning activities, you need to remember that much like everything else, learning activities also must carry the right context. For example, developing a game for compliance training is less effective as compared to using an interactive scenario where learners are put into a fictitious situation and made to decide what they would do. The latter would be contextually more relevant.

Additionally, using learning activities to create branching scenarios, comparative case studies, group collaborations via the social network, feature-rich eLearning games, personal learning paths, and more are just some of the learning activities that help in achieving learning goals. Also, identifying the media and the technology you want to incorporate in order to create an effective learning activity and a resulting experience also becomes an important contributing factor to a learning course’s overall effectiveness.

Using technologies such as big data can be immensely helpful when creating learning activities. Data helps you design more personalized learning material, identify faults in previously created learning activities, assess the kind of activity that is right for a training module, and come up with alternate activities when the effectiveness of the current activity is in question.

In order to use learning activities appropriately and impressively, it’s imperative to align it with learning objectives. To put it simply, learning objectives are the guide to drawing up learning activities that not only help test a learner’s existing knowledge but also assist in achieving the goal for the particular lesson which collectively leads to better engagement and learning.

Who are we?

In summary, learning objectives are the end goal of a learning experience, while learning activities are the means by which the goals are achieved. The two are interdependent and should be carefully aligned to ensure a well-designed and effective learning experience.

We are eNyota Learning, a leading eLearning design house and development agency serving the custom eLearning development space since 2007. Our client portfolio consists of some of the biggest and best brands in their respective spaces and we assist them in building custom eLearning-based training used to train their internal employees on a range of topics like selling, staying compliant, endorsing new processes, and workplace safety to name a few.

If your organization is looking to make a switch towards a more modern format of training such as eLearning, we’d be more than happy to help you make the switch. Reach out to us at [email protected] or click this form and we’ll get back to you. You can also try our learning management system here.

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Designing Your Classroom for Collaborative Teaching

These design strategies can help support relationship-building and active learning in a team-teaching environment.

illustration of building materials

Team teaching can give teachers the opportunity to build collegial relationships and to create a more differentiated environment that provides greater choice to both teachers and students . Collaborative teaching models have remarkably consistent positive effects across a wide variety of approaches to implementation. Team teaching also helps teachers feel more connected and supported, which in turn may help us address the teacher retention problem facing US education. 

However, most schools trying team teaching models need to rethink how their school environment can support a fundamentally different approach to the one-teacher-one-class model that was the norm when most schools and classrooms were designed. “Design”—whether it is architecture, interiors, or instruction—is really about creating something with an intent. I’m guessing that most readers don’t have the opportunity to design an entire new school (but some do!). Still, most teachers can make important choices about how we set up our classrooms.

In this context, designing a supportive environment for team teaching can make it more effective and magnify the benefits. Preparing an environment for team teaching serves as a daily reminder of the value of collaborative teaching to students and teachers alike.

Design for Collegial Relationships

Trust between the educators who are working together is an essential element of team teaching. Every teacher must establish their classroom culture. In team teaching models, this picture becomes more complex. The way that the adults interact with each other provides an important model that the students will immediately observe and learn from as well.

For example, how does one educator speak to the other if they have a question or don’t understand? How do they react to each other when they make a mistake? How do they share the labor in the classroom: Does only one teacher do the “tedious” tasks like cleaning or organizing? Each of these social dynamics provides a model for students to see how peers can and should collaborate with one another. 

Designing for trusting teaching dynamics means preparing your space for each teacher to assume different roles throughout each day. How can you prepare the environment to support this breadth of roles in a day?

Rethink “teacher space” as more communal, rather than private. Reduce the amount of exclusively “owned” space in the room. Make the teaching desk available to multiple users, or eliminate the teacher space in the classroom entirely.

Include areas in the room that emphasize each teacher’s strengths. Decorate the room with each teacher’s identity. For example, the room might display one teacher’s artwork and the other’s movie posters. You can also organize your space for each teacher’s favorite teaching methods. If one teacher loves reading circles and the other loves STEM projects, show that both are important with their own spaces in the classroom.

Protect teacher peace and identity within a more collaborative framework. Team teaching emphasizes human connection but does not eliminate the need for rest, planning, or personal moments. Make a plan for where and how you can make a confidential phone call, get highly focused work time, or simply eat your lunch alone when you need 20 minutes of quiet. Your plan could include reorganizing a faculty office/lounge for more personal space or having access to another area for some privacy and ownership.

Design for Fluid, Active Teaching

Team teaching is most effective when your model helps teachers integrate other effective practices into their teaching. Those practices can include project-based instruction and supporting student autonomy . Team teaching makes it easier to design interdisciplinary projects because each teacher can become an expert on different elements. For example, one teacher may be the class technology expert, and another may be the mathematics expert. As different teachers offer different resources to students, it elevates their autonomy by giving even more choices for how to engage the adults throughout the project.

Designing your environment to emphasize active, autonomous learning means preparing for more student movement and the structured unpredictability of creative student projects. How can you help students find what they need when you don’t always know what it will be in advance?

Hack your space for flexibility and agility. Flexible furniture is great for helping teachers and students move and reconfigure the environment throughout the day. Add tennis balls to the bottom of chairs and tables to make them easier to slide (or simply add casters).

Think creatively about other environmental elements: Remove doors from cabinets to let different groups see and use more materials, place markers by windows so students can use them as a writing surface, and orient some student seating near a teacher space to facilitate team members’ ability to do small group support within larger activities. Whether those resources are digital (like tablets) or analog (like mobile marker boards), the goal should be that students or teachers can quickly get them and respond to spontaneous needs that arise in the learning process.

Organize your space with “movement” as the default. Move your desks and chairs into clusters, with varied spaces for circulation. The groups can be different sizes and shapes, because different teachers can and will be managing different activities in them. The differences between group compositions can extend to how you engage new work surfaces, like windows for a new writing surface, walls for pin-up space or a mounted screen, or counters for an additional work surface.

Smaller reconfigurations happen more often than you may realize, and even more often with multiple teachers working together. You never know when people will need to scoot a table to alternate between periods of high circulation and periods of more spread-out tabletop work.

Team teaching offers the potential to make teaching more collaborative and satisfying by connecting multiple adults in a shared classroom practice. These are some early design approaches to supporting team teaching, but it is still an area of active research! 

Note: A thank-you to Stacy Roth for her ideas and expertise in developing this article.

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Determining Learning Activities and Assessments

Two students sitting at a table taking notes and watching a lecture on a laptop

Designing Learning Activities

Learning activity types, assessment types, asynchronous discussions.

Learning activities encompass everything that students do in a course, the online and offline tasks and assignments. Whether students read a journal article, a textbook chapter, your lecture, write a paper or an essay, participate in a discussion, take a test, give a presentation, conduct a survey, do an observation, run an experiment and so on–these are all learning activities.

Learning activities that provide information on the student’s knowledge or skills to either the student or instructor. Examples of an assessment are: a graded essay, a multiple-choice quiz that is automatically graded, a carefully crafted discussion forum that asks students to defend their opinion with research that demonstrates the learner has mastered a course objective.

Before you set out to develop a course, you need to  identify the outcomes, then plan out your learning activities and assessments within each module. At this stage, you might be asking some questions pertaining to the order in which the activities appear, their quantity, and pacing.

What to Consider

stages of eatting an apple: whole apple, one bite, two bites, etc.

When considering the sequence of the learning activities for each module, think about answers to these questions:

What it is the learning outcomes? How will the student demonstrate it? What learning activities would help the student gain the knowledge/skill in order to demonstrate the way I want them to? What prior konlwege does the student need and do they have that prior knowledge? Does the information need to be sequenced/scafolled, etc?

a tree with branches that have butterflies at the end of each branch

Some relevant questions to ask yourself when considering the quantity of the learning activities for each module are:

How many are needed to achieve the learning goal? How much maintenance or elaborative rehearsal is required? How much work do I expect from students in my traditional class? (You should expect the same quantity and quality of work from your online students as your classroom students.) How many students will be in this class? (for example, depending on course objectives, your potential involvement in class discussions and the number of written assignments can fluctuate.) What are the relative weights in terms of activity importance and how will the activities be evaluated?

a circle of squres with all but one filled in with a different color to represent where in the process they are

Some relevant questions to ask yourself when considering the pacing (or spreading) of the learning activities for each module are:

  • How long does it usually take students to accomplish a given task/activity?
  • Are there any issues specific to the online environment that would affect those expectations?
  • How long will it take the instructor to respond, give feedback, interact, etc. with students and their work?

Generally speaking, we divide learning activities into two major categories – activities where learners are doing or observing something, and activities where learners reflect on the meaning of their learning. Below are some learning activities based on their typology as we see them most often in online courses.

Assessment is any activity that informs these questions:

  • What are students learning?
  • How well are they learning it?

Online students need the following:

  • Clear statement of the learning goals and objectives.
  • Appropriate feedback, focused on these goals, received early and often.
  • Opportunities to assess their own learning.
  • Clear statement of what will be measured and evaluated in their learning.

Assessment for learning is often formative assessment , i.e. it takes place during the course of instruction by providing information that teachers can use to revise their teaching and students can use to improve their learning (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam, 2004). Formative assessment includes both informal assessment involving spontaneous unsystematic observations of students' behaviors (e.g. during a question and answer session or while the students are working on an assignment) and formal assessment involving pre-planned, systematic gathering of data. Assessment of learning is formal assessment that involves assessing students in order to certify their competence and fulfill accountability mandates. Assessment of learning is typically summative , that is, administered after the instruction is completed (e.g. a final examination in an educational psychology course). Summative assessments provide information about how well students mastered the material, whether students are ready for the next unit, and what grades should be given (Airasian, 2005).

Formative Assessments

Formative assessment typically occurs during and throughout instruction. When incorporated into classroom practice, it provides the information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening. In this sense, formative assessment informs both instructors and students about student understanding at a point when timely adjustments can be made. These adjustments help ensure that students reach appropriate standards-based learning goals within a set time frame. Research suggests that most assessments should be formative in nature (Garrison & Ehringhaus, 2007).

Formative assessment benefits the students as it provides timely feedback to students which allows them to take ownership of their learning progress and to evaluate their progress towards learning goals.

Formal Formative Assessments

  • Self assessment and reflection via logs, records, journals
  • Graphic organizers, web or concept map

Informal Formative Assessments

  • Observation

A growing body of research shows that formative assessment does improve learning when students understand the intended learning and the assessment criteria, when feedback to students is accurate and descriptive, provides information about how performance can be improved, and (most importantly) when students are actively involved with their own assessment. You should start thinking about how you will assess whether or not your students are understanding the concepts being taught.

Summative Evaluation

Summative assessment is assessment that typically occurs at the end of instruction to measure a student’s understanding of a subject. Typically, the student receives a mark or a grade for the purpose of making a final statement with regards to the student’s achievement and the effectiveness of instructional practices.

Examples of summative assessment include, but are not limited to:

  • Standardized state exams
  • Midterms or final exams
  • End of unit tests
  • Performances
  • Final copies

Writing Online Discussion Questions

Writing effective discussion prompts and questions for online and blended courses can help your students engage more deeply with the course and enhance their interactions with one another.

Additionally, discussion forums offer several affordances:

  • Students can craft their responses in a more thoughtful way than in a face-to-face classroom discussion.
  • Students can complete write their posts at a time convenient to them.
  • Discussions can be read and re-read, referenced, and archived.

Discussion prompts and questions should ask students to engage with content at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, such as analysis, evaluation, interpretation, and creation (Ertmer, Sadaf & Ertmer, 2011; Greenlaw & Deloach, 2003).

The Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid has lower-order thinking skills at the base and moves to higher-order thinking skills at the top. From the base to the top, the skills are: Remeber (Recalling specific facts), Understand (Grasping meaning of instructional materials), Apply (Using information in a new but similar situation), Analyze (Taking apart the known and identify relationships), Evaluate (Examining information and make judgements) and Create (Using information to create something new).

Visual of Bloom's Taxonomy

Points to Consider

  • Determine the objective for the discussion activity first – then write the discussion questions(s)
  • When the objective of the discussion is determined you can select the type of questions. There are many question types: Exploratory, Challenge, Relational, Diagnostic, Action, and Summary.
  • Open-ended questions encourage students to support their answers with content from the course and outside resources
  • Provide introductory text and suggested readings that help students to engage with the questions.
  • Encourage students to incorporate their own experiences, which helps to further contextualize the material within the students’ prior learning (Hew & Cheung, 2012).
  • Avoid more than 2 or 3 questions. Any more than that and the students lose focus of what is important and either they end up submitting mini-essays or they skip some of the prompts to keep the post short.
  • Provide clear directions on how students should craft their response post and their responses to other posts – including any requirements for citing sources to support their writing.

Now that you have determined learning activities, move on to the next step : Selecting Content

Garrison, C., & Ehringhaus, M. (2007). Formative and summative assessments in the classroom

Deeper Learning Through Questioning https://lincs.ed.gov/sites/default/files/12_TEAL_Deeper_Learning_Qs_complete_5_1_0.pdf   

Using Effective Questions

https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/engaging-students/using-effective-questions   

“Does your dog bite?” Creating Good Questions for Online Discussions

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1068072.pdf   

Ertmer, P. A., Sadaf, A., and Ertmer, D. J. (2011). Student-content interactions in online courses: The role of question prompts in facilitating higher-level engagement with course content. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 23 (2-3), 157-186. 

Greenlaw, S. A., and DeLoach, S. B. (2003). Teaching critical thinking with electronic discussion. Journal of Economic Education, 34 (1), 36-52. 

Hew, K. F., and Cheung, W. S. (2012). Student participation in online discussions: Challenges, solutions and future research. New York: Springer. 

Howard, J. R. (2015). Discussions in the college classroom: Getting your students engaged and participating in person and online. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Nathan Gonyea, Assessment: Basic Assessment Concepts. OpenStax CNX. Mar 26, 2012 http://cnx.org/contents/9741555b-741c-4f7c-b35c-5e4caded8121@  1.Airasian, P. W. (2005). Classroom Assessment: Concepts and Applications (3rd ed). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.

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Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities

Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities

Requirements.

This is a comprehensive teacher professional development course that will teach you about specific instructional strategies and learning activities that you can select for an upcoming unit planned, well-aligned with your chosen assessments and lesson objectives. You will learn five instructional strategies and how to choose the best one based on the lesson content, your student’s needs, and available resources. Next, you will delve into the difference between active and passive learning and evaluate areas for improvement in your own lesson activities. Lastly, you will complete the course with a ready-to-implement unit plan you have created and use that alongside the various resources provided to you in this class to enable success in your classroom.

Enrollment Options:

  • The Differences Between Traditional Planning & Planning Using Backwards Design
  • The Three Stages of Planning Using Backwards Design
  • What’s Involved in Planning Instruction
  • The Importance of Having a Learning Plan
  • Direct Instruction
  • Demonstration
  • Cooperative Learning
  • Discover or Inquiry-Based Learning
  • Project-Based Learning
  • Instructional Strategies Are Flexible and Dynamic, and Multiple Strategies Can be Used in One Lesson
  • How to Choose an Appropriate Instructional Strategy
  • How to Take into Consideration the Lesson Content, the Needs of Your Students, Your Own Personal Experience, and the Time and Resources Available
  • The Meaning of and Differences Between Active Learning and Passive Learning
  • When Each Type of Learning is Appropriate
  • The Three Main Components of Any Active Learning Activity
  • The Importance of Aligning Your Activities with Your Objectives
  • About Different Learner Types Including Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Global, and Analytic
  • Examples of Appropriate Instructional Activities for Each Type
  • What You Need to Consider as You Choose Instructional Activities
  • Using the sample provided, build your unit plan, selecting from the various instructional strategies discussed in this course. 
  • Applying What You Have Learned
  • Get ideas on how to implement the concepts into your classroom, find a list of online resources that support strategies for instruction, and research behind different instructional models. 

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to take this course. 

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

This course can be taken on either a PC, Mac, or Chromebook device.

Software Requirements:

  • PC: Windows 10 or later operating systems.
  • Mac: OS 10.6 or later.
  • Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox is preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.
  • Microsoft Word Online
  • Adobe Acrobat Reader
  • Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.
  • Other: Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.
  • Editing of a Microsoft Word document is required in this course. You may use a free version of Microsoft Word Online, or Google Docs if you do not have Microsoft Office installed on your computer. Model Teaching can provide support for this.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.  

Related Courses

Towards design principles for an online learning platform providing reflective practices for developing employability competences

  • Open access
  • Published: 22 February 2024

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

  • Perry Heymann   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1696-5021 1 ,
  • Marloes Hukema 1   nAff2 ,
  • Peter van Rosmalen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3405-9599 1 , 3 &
  • Simon Beausaert   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3036-8143 1 , 4  

Graduates require employability competences, such as flexibility and team working skills, to gain and maintain employment. Online learning platforms (OLPs) can provide students with resources for reflection, which is a key competence for employability. However, little is known about the design of OLPs meant to provide reflective practices that foster students’ employability competences. This research study aims to identify design principles of OLPs providing reflective practices that foster the development of employability competences. Five design principles were derived from thematic analysis following two focus group interviews with students and educational experts in this qualitative study: 1) Embed the OLP in curricular and institutional activities that foster competence development; 2) Facilitate the analysis of students’ current state regarding employability competences; 3) Provide recommendations and a repository with learning activities that help students to formulate goals and plan activities; 4) Facilitate the undertaking and recording of learning activities, supported by a blend of three forms of interaction (instructor-student; student–student or student-content); and 5) Foster reflection in and on action via opportunities for applying newly learned knowledge in different settings and reviewing activities via reflective journaling and knowledge sharing. This study is the first to conceptualise design principles for an OLP that is organised to provide reflective practices for the development of employability competences. The design principles were based on students’ and teachers’ experiences and are grounded in theory. They can inform future research as well as practitioners developing OLPs.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are putting increasing focus on the development of employability competences, alongside specific academic knowledge and skills, in order to prepare graduates for the labour market (Aarts & Künn, 2019 ; Bridgstock & Jackson, 2019 ). Since reflection is considered as a key competence for the development of employability (Clarke, 2018 ; Moon, 2004 ), higher education is increasingly embedding reflective practices that elicit reflection and, in turn, the development of students’ employability competences (Van Beveren et al., 2018 ).

The past decades have shown increasing use of technology within higher education to support activities associated with the acquisition of knowledge and the development of skills, including reflection (Iqbal et al., 2022 ; Kori et al., 2014 ; Lin et al., 1999 ). Online learning platforms (OLPs) can be beneficial for eliciting students’ reflection, because they include tools such as chats, blogs and online discussion forums that have been acclaimed as supporting reflective learning activities (Burhan-Horasanlı & Ortaçtepe, 2016 ; Kori et al., 2014 ). OLPs offer the opportunity to apply pedagogical approaches that allow the embedment of employability development into the curriculum (Harvey, 2005 ).

However, to the best of our knowledge, little to no attention has been paid to the design of OLPs meant to support reflective practices, incorporating potentially both curricular and extra-curricular learning activities, and fostering students’ employability competences. Since OLPs and their methods of design can differ widely, defining design principles and having insight into how they contribute to the effectiveness of an OLP is relevant (Mupinga et al., 2006 ). Van den Akker et al. ( 2006 ) defined design principles as heuristic guidelines to help others select and apply the most appropriate substantive and procedural knowledge for specific tasks in their own settings.

To be able to identify design principles for online learning platforms organised to provide reflective practices for developing employability competences, we first position ourselves with regard to the underlying theoretical concepts: employability, reflective practice, online learning platforms and the learner together with the broader context.

1.1 Employability

The concept of employability has been studied in different strands of the literature, mainly related to either human resource development or higher education (Scoupe et al., 2023 ). A competence-based approach to employability dominates in the context of higher education. It entails the identification and development of competences, including knowledge, skills and attitudes and attributes that foster students’ ability to obtain and maintain employment (Abelha et al., 2020 ; Bridgstock, 2009 ; Bridgstock & Jackson, 2019 ). Scoupe et al. ( 2023 ) described a multidimensional competence-based approach to employability. One of these dimensions is related to self-management or meta-cognitive competences that encompass the capacity for reflection and evaluation (Scoupe et al., 2023 ). The ongoing process of reflection and evaluation is addressed in the literature as key for employability (Bridgstock, 2009 ; Pool & Sewell, 2007 ). Other employability competences described by Scoupe et al. ( 2023 ) include expertise-based competences, including knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to perform in a particular field of expertise; social competences, such as networking skills and the capacity to collaborate with others; emotional regulation, that is, the ability to perceive, access and control emotions when facing new situations or challenges; efficacy beliefs that are related to the extent of a positive self-esteem; lifelong learning and flexibility, which includes the need to continue learning and to (pro-)actively as well as passively adapt to changing situations and environments; and lastly, a healthy work-life balance, the ability to balance personal and professional goals.

1.2 Reflective practice

Reflective practices are a vital element enhancing students’ learning by reflection on their experiences (Mann et al., 2007 ; Rogers, 2001 ). Based on literature about reflection (Boud et al., 1985 ; Moon, 2004 ; Rogers, 2001 ) and reflective practices (Atkins & Murphy, 1995 ; Boyd & Fales, 1983 ; Schön, 1983 ), a reflective practice that fosters employability competences can be defined as a recursive process of internally examining and exploring a sense of inner discomfort regarding employability competences, followed by a cascade of learning activities (Heymann et al., 2022 ). Five phases of reflective activities fit into this practice. First, students need to become aware by developing a sense of inner discomfort regarding employability competences, caused by an experience (e.g., a presentation, an internship, a peer story). The awareness of inner feelings leads to an analysis of the current state , which consists of identifying existing knowledge, collecting additional information and challenging assumptions. Typical learning activities that support this stage are self-reflection, self-assessments and feedback from peers, coaches or professionals. Next, students draft and plan a solution in terms of goal setting and personal development planning regarding the development of their employability competences. The fourth stage – take action – entails experimentation in the form of undertaking activities that yield experiences that enable re-evaluation of the original problem. These learning activities derive not only from curricular courses, but also from co-curricular and extracurricular activities. Students collect and maintain evidence of achievement of the activities undertaken and the outcomes as defined in their personal goals, noted in a portfolio. Finally, student reflect on their experience via reflection-in action – examining experiences as they happen – and reflection-on-action which involves reviewing, describing, analysing and evaluating past practices. This re-evaluation enables students to develop a new perspective on the initial situation of inner discomfort regarding their employability competences.

1.3 Online learning platforms

Online learning platforms can be effective in fostering employability competences by providing meaningful learning experiences. An online learning platform (OLP) can be defined as an environment where learning takes place moderated by technology (Oliwa, 2021 ). An OLP might encompass an integrated set of online tools, services and resources that support a student’s central learning experience by unifying educational theory and practice, technology and content (Hill, 2012 ). OLPs offer students a flexible and personalised approach to their learning process, facilitate collaboration and communication in synchronous and asynchronous modes, and create a bridge between curricular and extracurricular activities (Harvey, 2005 ; Kumar Basak et al., 2018 ; Reese, 2015 ). OLPs can support reflective practices via online tools such as self- and peer-assessments, reflective exercises, chats, blogs, online discussion forums, learning journals and e-portfolios (Kori et al., 2014 ; Lin et al., 1999 ; Moon, 2004 ).

Hollenbeck et al. ( 2011 ) identified five pedagogical design principles for OLPs. First, student-to-student interaction refers to tools, such as online discussion forums, blogs, e-mail or chats that facilitate communication between students about concepts being addressed. Second, it is important for students to have easy access to their instructor. This instructor-to-student interaction should include reciprocal communication that also supports the learner’s instruction, interventions and communications on the platform (Park & Lim, 2019 ). The third pedagogical principle concerns the accuracy and validity of an OLP’s content. Quality content is the extent to which the information on a website is perceived as valid and dependable (Hollenbeck et al., 2011 ). Fourth, the relation between the accuracy and completeness with which students achieve certain goals and the resources expended to achieve those goals is defined as goal efficiency . If functions of an OLP work properly and are easy to use, task completion time and errors are expected to be reduced, which, in turn, increases user satisfaction (Hollenbeck et al., 2011 ). The fifth principle, appeal , has to do with presentation, attractiveness, display consistency, categorisation of the information in a user-friendly format, customisation and flexibility. These aspects facilitate understanding and navigating through the contents of the OLP.

1.4 The learner and the broader context

To achieve the technological and pedagogical benefits associated with OLPs, it is important to gain insight into the beliefs, attitudes and behaviour that impact students’ intentions to use an OLP. Determinants of such intentions have been studied and described in two prominent theoretical models: the technology acceptance model and the decomposed theory of planned behaviour (Ahmed & Ward, 2016 ). Both models are grounded in the beliefs-intention-behaviour structure, wherein behavioural intention captures the influential factors that affect student’s behaviour, that is, the actual use of an OLP (Ahmed & Ward, 2016 ).

Motivation is considered a key determinant of learning. Motivation involves the internal processes that affect the direction and level of behaviour (Lee et al., 2005 ). Direction involves the selection, initiation, operationalisation and termination of the type of behaviour. Direction gives behaviour a specific purpose. The level of behaviour reflects the intensity, the strength and persistence of the behaviour concerned (Alsawaier, 2018 ; Buckley & Doyle, 2016 ; Lee et al., 2005 ).

Two types of behavioural drivers are distinguished in the literature: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. According to Ryan and Deci ( 2000 ), intrinsic motivation in an educational context refers to engagement of students in learning activities for their own sake, triggered by the desire to perform a learning activity in order to know, to accomplish or to experience stimulation (Buckley & Doyle, 2016 ). In the case of extrinsic motivation, the stimulus to learn is always external to the learner, for example, reward or recognition or the dictates of other people (Lee et al., 2005 ). Individual characteristics of the learner, such as motivation, constantly interact with the broader environment in which students are studying (Virtanen & Tynjälä, 2019 ). For example, the influence of peers, teachers, and the culture of the school is not to be neglected (Lim & Kim, 2003 ).

1.5 Research question

This research study aims to identify design principles of online learning platforms that provide reflective practices fostering the development of employability competences. The research question is: What are design principles for online learning platforms meant to support reflective practices that foster the development of employability competences?

A qualitative exploratory-descriptive design using focus groups was adopted to elicit information about the design principles for an OLP that fosters employability competences via reflective practices. The use of focus groups enables gathering large amounts of information regarding attitudes, beliefs and experiences from different perspectives in a short period, through natural communication and stimulated group interaction (Dawson et al., 1993 ; Krueger & Casey, 2002 ). Although focus groups can be biased by social pressure to conform to the group norms, the group discussions and interactions and sharing opinions from different perspectives are recognized as better than individual interviews for exploring a complex issue in depth (Dawson et al., 1993 ; Krueger & Casey, 2002 ).

2.1 Context and sampling strategy

The focus groups were conducted at a Dutch university. Since the focus of this research study was to identify design principles for an online learning platform that fosters students’ employability competences, one focus group was conducted with a group of graduate students ( n  = 5), while another focus group included educational experts ( n  = 5).

The students were recruited from various study programs (i.e., Organizational Learning, Learning and Development, Marketing and Economics, and Psychology) via an invitational email, sent by the university’s Career Services department. The focus group with students focused on both their experiences with online learning platforms, and their preferences regarding reflective practices for the development of their employability competences.

The second focus group consisted of three teachers, two of them also assigned as coaches, and two staff members who were involved in educational innovation projects on student employability. The educational experts came from various disciplines (i.e., Education, Science and Engineering, Economics and Business). Regarding the educational experts, the interview covered questions about their expertise concerning online learning platforms as ways to provide reflective practices and how students can effectively develop employability competences.

During both focus groups, one particular online learning platform implemented at the university was referred to during the interviews, by way of example. The platform consisted of a learning management system, an online self-assessment questionnaire about employability and a portal with resources, including various online resources (e.g., personality tests, vacancies, reading materials), activities (lectures and workshops) and online career modules.

Both students and educational experts participated in the focus groups on a voluntary basis, with anonymous analysis and reporting. Before the interview started, a brief introduction was given to the participants about the procedure, the research topic, and permission was obtained for recording the interview.

2.2 Data collection methods and instruments

Prior to the interviews, a semi-structured guideline was composed, based on the theoretical frameworks as described above. The interview guideline consisted of main questions and sub-questions per theme, allowing the interviewer to examine different experiences, insights, and opinions.

The two focus groups took approximately 1 h each and were conducted via Zoom. The focus group with the students happened in English, while the interview with the educational experts was conducted in Dutch. In this paper, quotations of the educational experts have been translated. The focus groups were audio-recorded, which allowed the interviewer to maintain focus on the group rather than taking notes (Krueger & Casey, 2002 ).

2.3 Data processing, thematic analysis and reliability

The interviews were fully transcribed, followed by upload into Atlas.ti for thematic content and co-occurrence analysis. Thematic analysis was used to identify, analyse, and report patterns within the qualitative data. Exploration of the data included measuring the prevalence of single items or themes within or across the focus groups (Braun & Clarke, 2006 ). In addition, the number of instances of two codes co-occurring in the data was also determined. The more co-occurrences exist in the data, the more likely it is that a relationship exists between two concepts or themes (Friese, 2019 ).

The coding was done on the meaningful segments of both interviews, both deductively, starting with key concepts from literature, and inductively, by adding new themes derived from segments that could not be coded with the existing set of codes. The researcher compared new codes with the literature and either assigned the codes to existing themes or defined a new theme. Each meaningful segment could get one or more codes assigned. According to Morgan ( 2022 ) deductive thematic analysis is mostly aimed at gathering evidence related to the themes, which are often predetermined, whereas inductive analysis is focussed on identifying patterns in the data that often represent the opinions as raised by the participants of the focus groups.

This circular process of coding evolved into a codebook with deductive codes from the literature and inductive codes based on the data. The inductive codes were linked with existing themes or considered as belonging to new themes.

To determine the consistency in classifying items into mutually exclusive categories, interrater reliability was established, using Cohen’s kappa (O’Connor & Joffe, 2020 ). An independent coder identified codes for randomly selected meaningful segments making up 15% of the data. Differences were discussed until consensus was reached and revisions, where needed, were made. This process resulted in adequate inter-coder reliability as shown by a Cohen’s kappa of 0.723, indicating acceptable, substantial agreement between the coders (Sun, 2011 ).

Lastly, ATLAS.ti was used to generate reports by calculating the prevalence of and co-occurrences between the codes (Friese, 2019 ).

In this section, we first present the coding scheme derived from the focus group interviews. Next, we describe the general findings regarding design principles for an OLP providing reflective practices based on the prevalence of themes (i.e., employability, reflective practice, online learning platform, and the learner and the broader context), followed by the interpretation based on co-occurrences. As previously stated, co-occurrences represent possible relations between codes or concepts. As the research question is about identifying the design principles for an OLP providing reflective practice, co-occurrences between identified themes related to the OLP (i.e., employability, features of the OLP, the learner and the context) and the phases of reflective practice (i.e., become aware, analyse current state, draft and plan a solution, take action, reflect in/on action) were investigated.

3.1 Coding scheme

The deductive and inductive codes for the focus group interviews are depicted in Table  1 , including the frequencies of occurrence of each code during the two focus groups. The deductive codes represent evidence for the themes we predetermined from the literature, whereas the inductive codes represent patterns in data that were derived from the opinions of the focus group participants.

3.2 Key findings per theme

Based on the code frequencies shown in Table  1 , we can derive the following key findings per theme.

3.2.1 Employability

Interviewees in both focus groups provided examples of employability competencies such as adaptability, oral and written communication, presenting, collaboration, critical strategic planning, leadership skills and networking. For students, it was important to gain more insights and feel more confident:

I would be interested in more something like a training on specific skills. Like public speaking or critical strategic planning. These kinds of things, so that I can really get in depth and then I feel like I would also be more confident communicating it at an interview. Like, I can do this because I have been trained in this. (2:54 Student A) I directly think about presenting, public speaking and networking. I think those are three really important capabilities within a lot of jobs. (2:88 Student B)

3.2.2 Reflective practice

For students, the ‘Become aware’ phase often started with feelings of fear or uncertainty regarding a situation or their future:

A lot of people fear something or are uncertain about a situation and I think helping us with that, like that helps with changing but it also helps in more global ways with us in our personal life and work life. (2:92 Student B)

Educational experts envisioned that, by linking intended learning outcomes in curricula with employability competences, students can monitor their progress regarding the development of employability competences, which will make them more aware of their employability.

Both students and educational experts recommended an online self-assessment as a starting point for analysing students’ strengths and weaknesses. According to the students, the OLP should include an easy to search and filter overview of activities that are related both to results of the self-assessment and to other relevant activities offered within the university or linked to external resources. Such a repository filled with activities supports students in defining goals and planning activities, which aligns with the ‘Draft and plan solution’ phase. The educational experts underlined the need to define goals with a longer-term perspective in mind that overarches multiple courses or modules within a study programme.

It should actually be something they can carry with them across several subjects or at least be able to continue to focus. So it definitely has to have that kind of longitudinal approach as well. (3:152 Educational expert D)

When asked about the kinds of ‘Take action’ activities that should be available via the OLP, students suggested e-modules, online workshops, links to vacancy boards and company pages, podcasts and a functionality for registration for on-site workshops.

According to the students, reflection-in-action involves practicing knowledge and skills in different settings, whereas reflection-on-action entails asking for feedback and integrating new insights into existing knowledge. In contrast to the students, the educational experts believed that reflection-in-action involves the exchange of experiences between students.

3.2.3 Online learning platform

Regarding the features of an OLP, both students and educational experts discussed three forms of interaction: student-to-student, instructor-to-student and student-to-content interaction. The last, student-to-content interaction, was mentioned most often and has been identified as an inductive theme. Examples of content mentioned by the interviewees were podcasts, videos, self-assessments, games, links to external resources and online tutorials and articles. Students preferred to read theoretical knowledge regarding the development of employability competences. This theoretical information could be presented either as in-depth material that is linked with a curricular course or as preparatory material followed by learning activities to bring theory into practice. One student said the following about this form of blended learning:

I had the experience that we had a workshop on team building. Before that workshop, we were supposed to read some parts from the OLP on conflict resolution. And I found that a very good balance because then we got the knowledge online, but I think for especially for developing social skills, you really need to actually interact with people. (2:57 Student A)

The educational experts also discussed instructor-to-student interaction, such as moderating chats and discussion forums or posting announcements. Regarding student-to-student interaction, educational experts mentioned sharing experiences or interacting with students from other study programmes as examples of this type of interaction.

Three additional features of the OLP were mentioned by the interviewees. First was goal efficiency, meaning that the OLP should foster the development of employability competences in such a way that it allows students to gain a more in-depth understanding without putting too much effort or time to find the right and relevant activities or making them feel overwhelmed. Quality of content, which students considered to refer to content that is linked to external resources, was expected to contribute to a higher level of perceived usefulness of the OLP. Third, students also considered the appeal and interface of the OLP to be important. Presenting information in a user-friendly format was expected to help students understand and navigate through the content on the OLP.

3.2.4 Learner and context

Students mentioned several contextual factors that affect their attitude towards the use of the OLP: (1) communication and information about the existence of the OLP, (2) the OLP’s connection with curricular courses, other platforms (such as vacancy listings) and external resources, (3) follow-up provided by the OLP after undertaking activities, (4) influence from peers and instructors and (5) user-friendly categorised and searchable information.

Regarding motivation to use the OLP as a way to engage in reflective practice, students realised that they must work on their competences for themselves. However, they were also searching for motivational factors that would make them use the OLP. The use of certificates or credits and gamification were mentioned as examples of such stimuli. The educational experts mentioned the role of a coach or mentor as a motivational factor, but they also discussed the balance between supporting versus pampering students:

I think that you can organize that personal contact in a way that emphasizes the student's own responsibility and wherein a student also feels the consequences if he or she did not. I think that is also an important function of the university that you sometimes don't do things or fail and that you then learn to deal with it. You shouldn't take that away as a coach. (3:126 Educational expert C)

Two inductive topics emerged in particular from the experts’ focus group. The educational experts argued that integration of the OLP for employability with coaching or mentoring trajectories is indispensable to make students aware of their employability. They also advocated that embedding an employability competence framework in curricula is needed to ensure awareness and reflection amongst students when using an OLP for employability competence development.

Embedding employability competences in the curriculum should of course be programmatic, right? That there is a plan behind it: from where do we start? How do we build up the retention of competences? Where do different aspects of competences come from? Where do they get a place? Are there additional activities? We have company visits in our master program where you can immediately take a look at: What do our alumni do? And how does that work? That you get a concrete picture. Those are small things, yes, but they do help to paint a clear picture of where I am going as a student. (3:141 Educational expert C)

Finally, educational experts also recommended paying attention to teacher professional development when implementing an OLP that fosters the development of employability competences. This was the last inductive code, we derived from the focus groups.

When it comes to organizing your education, you may have to look much more at professional tasks as well … so you will also have to do a lot for the teaching staff to include them in the change. Yes, it is essential to also renew didactic training about employability for teachers. (3:115 Educational expert E)

3.3 Themes in co-occurrence with reflective practice

Since our aim is to identify the design principles for an OLP providing reflective practice, we present the findings from the co-occurrences tables per phase of reflective practice, as outlined in the sections below. Table 2 shows the co-occurrences of the themes employability, the features of an OLP, the learner and contextual factors with the phases of reflective practice for the students’ focus group interview, and Table  3 for the interview with the educational experts.

The students mentioned the ‘Take action’ phase of the reflective practice most often in combination with the other themes, while the educational experts discussed the first phase, ‘Become aware’, most often in combination with other themes. In both focus groups, student-to-content interaction was most frequently mentioned with respect to all phases of reflective practice.

3.3.1 Become aware

The first phase, ‘Become aware’, was mainly mentioned in combination with employability competences (students) and embedding the concept of employability in curricula (experts). Educational experts argued that the development of competences within curricula should be made more explicit to students in order to raise their awareness about their employability. As one of the experts explained:

There are 2 things that I would recommend. Firstly, that it is much clearer to students in their curriculum which intended learning outcomes are linked to employability so that they are more aware of this. And the second is that students can accomplish learning activities, such as assessments and participation. If these learning activities are aligned to these learning outcomes, they can also be linked to employability competencies so you will be able to see some kind of progression throughout the study programme. (3:171 Educational expert B)

In addition, instructor-to-student interaction, such as having a chat with a coach or mentor, can be used as an instrument to motivate students’ thinking about their employability, thus raising their awareness as well. Finally, student-to-content interaction might also induce awareness about employability. One educational expert provided the following example:

At the start of the academic year, we ask students to search for two or three vacancies on the online vacancy board. When they analyse these vacancies, they will discover that employers ask for all kinds of competences next to academic knowledge. Reading these vacancies fosters students’ awareness about their employability. (3:163 Educational expert D)

3.3.2 Analyse current state

Students mentioned ‘Analysing the current state’ mainly in combination with features of the OLP that are related to goal efficiency and student-to-content interaction. Students considered the OLP attractive to use if results of an online self-assessment could be linked with not-too-obvious suggestions for improvement of competences.

I actually thought it was a smart idea like when you get the results [following the self-assessment] and you think, “Oh, that's kind of obvious,” but you can click through on them and then it's gets more complicated. Like now you know this, you can approve or improve this and this. I think for me, that would make it more interesting . (2:86 Student B)

The educational experts linked this phase of reflective practice with learners’ motivation and contextual factors. Linking the results of the self-assessment with an overview of in-depth activities was deemed to be crucial as a follow-up to get students motivated to reflect on their current state and move forward in their development. Both students and educational experts argued that discussing the results of the self-assessment with a coach, mentor or career advisor can facilitate analysis of one’s current state.

3.3.3 Draft and plan a solution

For the next phase, ‘Draft and plan a solution’, interviewees combined this with mentions of features of the OLP such as quality of content, goal efficiency and different types of interaction.

According to the students, the OLP should foster the development of employability competences in a way that allows them to gain more in-depth understanding without putting in too much effort or time finding the right and relevant activities or making them feel overwhelmed. Information organized in a user-friendly format helps students understand and navigate through the content on the OLP. Students also preferred to get new directions for other related activities once they have finished activities that they are currently working on or completed in the past. The following conversation captures these views:

... if I would like to develop e.g. my networking skills then I would like to see something in the front of me like that “do this to develop your networking” and then if I did that, then the OLP says like “OK now you have your network in place, do this or this to make use of it.” (2:98 Student B)

In addition, students also mentioned motivational aspects together with this phase. Students mentioned that their attitude towards using the OLP in this stage of reflective practice would depend strongly on the ease of finding relevant activities that fit with their goals and with their current course-related learning activities.

…if they could, this [connecting your goals to what you are already studying] would be great. Cause then you can really link what you are studying to which competencies you would like to further develop. (2:138 Student E)

3.3.4 Take action

In the interview with students, the ‘Take action’ reflective phase was mentioned in combination with six other codes. First, students linked it with the development of employability competencies, such as adaptability, oral communication, critical strategic planning or networking to undertaking activities within the OLP. Second, students argued that experiential activities with a blended instructional design, such as reading theoretical background information on the OLP or listening to podcasts, and conducting practical exercises during workshops on-site, would fit well in an OLP. Third, students specifically mentioned student-to-content interactions that are relevant for undertaking activities. In particular, they mentioned links to external resources such as vacancy listings or external trainings offered via LinkedIn. Fourth, perceived usefulness and social influence were frequently mentioned as factors that would affect the use of the OLP when talking about undertaking activities via the OLP:

If I would hear from friends what they saw on the OLP and they are using it, I would be also more interested to use it this. So, I think that social influence from your friends is an option that might work. (2:139 Student B)

Fifth, practicing skills together, sharing experiences or interacting with students from other study programmes were brought up as forms of student-to-student interaction in combination with ‘Take action’. Lastly, regarding motivation, students mentioned certificates or other forms of evidence that they have undertaken specific activities, which they can add to any kind of portfolio or to their LinkedIn profiles. Gamification was also mentioned by two students as a motivational tool.

Educational experts mostly mentioned forms of interaction within the OLP in combination with the ‘Take action’ phase. Regarding instructor-to-student interaction, educational experts mentioned having a chat with a teacher or coach, moderating a discussion board or posting announcements. Regarding student-to-student interaction, educational experts mentioned practicing skills together, sharing experiences or interacting with students from other study programmes. The educational experts also discussed the use of an e-portfolio as a form of student-to-content interaction.

3.3.5 Reflect in and on action

The last phase of reflective practice, ‘Reflect in/on action’, was mostly mentioned in combination with features of the OLP and learner factors. For students, the OLP could help them to apply newly learned knowledge or skills in different settings. In addition, they mentioned giving and receiving feedback as a mean to reflect on action. A coach or mentor could serve as someone who keeps the student accountable regarding their competence development.

One of the educational experts suggested that the OLP should facilitate ongoing interaction between students as a follow-up to activities such as workshops. This could support the collaborative learning that fosters reflection in and on action.

Educational experts also argued that the OLP could nudge students to reflect on their actions:

That with the help of the input from the OLP students are supported in thinking about how their competence has actually developed during the course: ‘Have I become stronger at this. Do I feel something is missing? That you are a bit nudged by the OLP asking for feedback in your environment. (3:555 Educational expert D)

4 Discussion

Considering the key role of reflection in the development of employability competences and the increasing use of technology that supports learning activities, we aimed to identify how online learning platforms can be used to provide reflective practices that foster the development of employability skills of students in higher education. In the introduction, we framed reflective practice as a recurrent process that consists of five phases involving undertaking learning activities that foster the development of employability competences. In the next section, we formulate for each reflective practice phase the design principles for an OLP that are derived from the thematic analysis of the focus group interviews.

4.1 Design principles for an OLP providing reflective practice

4.1.1 become aware.

Students and educational experts both argued that an OLP cannot trigger awareness regarding the need for developing employability competences by itself. Such an OLP should be connected with curricular learning activities, with additional external content, such as vacancy listings or company pages, and preferably with coaching or mentoring trajectories organised by the school. This inductively derived observation is in line with several other studies that have advocated embedding employability in the curriculum, for example, by identifying programme objectives as employability skills, offering career development activities at the central level, and the implementation of coaching trajectories (Abelha et al., 2020 ; Bridgstock & Jackson, 2019 ; Harvey, 2005 ; Krouwel et al., 2019 ).

Therefore, we formulate the following design principle to support the first reflective practice phase ‘Become aware’:

Design principle 1 The use of an OLP organised to provide reflective practices should be triggered by curricular and institutional learning activities that foster the development of employability competences, including coaching or mentoring trajectories.

4.1.2 Analyse current state

Self-assessment fosters reflection on one’s own learning process, and helps students to evaluate their current strengths and weaknesses (Boud et al., 1985 ; Samuels & Betts, 2007 ). Self-assessment also encourages students to engage in further information-seeking activities related to goal setting (Griffiths et al., 2018 ).

In both focus groups, the use of online self-assessment was mentioned as an instrument to initiate self-reflection, which in turn, leads to better understanding of students’ levels of competence, as was also proposed by Martínez-Villagrasa et al. ( 2020 ). For the reflective practice phase ‘Analyse current state’, we propose the following design principle:

Design principle 2 An OLP organised to provide reflective practices facilitates online self-assessments and supports activities for gathering feedback from peers or staff to help students analyse their strengths and weaknesses in regard to their employability competences. The results of these self-assessment activities should be presented in a way that enables students to reflect on their current state.

4.1.3 Draft and plan a solution

Results of online assessments and feedback gathering should be accompanied with recommendations that help students to formulate goals in response. Goal setting is a learning activity that helps students to define realistic and measurable goals and select activities that support these goals (Jackson, 2015 ). Typical online learning activities that fit with this phase are blogs, wikis, media resources, and journals (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012 ), supported by a repository that offers a comprehensive overview of all types of curricular and extra-curricular activities that foster the development of employability competences (Kleinberger et al., 2001 ). Information should be organised in a user-friendly format that is easily searchable and filterable, allowing students to find and select activities in an efficient manner (Hollenbeck et al., 2011 ). From the focus group interviews, we derived the third design principle:

Design principle 3 An OLP organised to provide reflective practices gives recommendations derived from the self-assessments and feedback gathering. In addition, the OLP includes an easily searchable and filterable repository with learning activities that help students to formulate goals and plan activities.

4.1.4 Take action

Taking action requires experimentation in the form of undertaking activities that yield experiences to use in re-evaluation of the original problem (Dewey, 1933 ; Schön, 1983 ). Interviewees in both groups (students and educational experts) suggested that the OLP should offer the following activities regarding ‘Take action’: e-modules, online workshops, links to vacancy listings and company pages, podcasts, discussion boards and a functionality for registration for on-site workshops.

Students expressed their preference regarding the use of blended learning activities for the development of their competences. Blended learning can be framed as the integration of face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences, with the goal of stimulating and supporting learning (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004 ). Both students and educational experts discussed some key challenges for blended learning activities, as also described by Boelens et al. ( 2017 ): flexibility (time, place, path and pace of learning); facilitation of students’ learning process (finding the right balance of self-regulation versus support), fostering a motivating learning climate (e.g., influence of a coach or mentor, certificates or gamification), and interaction between instructor and students (e.g., chats, moderating discussion boards or posting announcements).

These key challenges also touch upon another crucial aspect of the educational process: the role of interaction. Whereas Hollenbeck et al. ( 2011 ) described instructor-student and student–student interaction, we encountered a third form of interaction, interaction between student and content, in the thematic analysis of the focus group interviews. In the context of the OLP in our study, these three types of interaction have different functions. Both students and educational experts mentioned practicing skills together, sharing experiences or interacting with students from other study programmes as examples of student-to-student interaction, which is thought to foster the capacity to participate effectively in teams and to demonstrate communication skills (Anderson, 2003 ). The key element in instructor-to-student interaction is support. Such interaction is essential to stimulate critical reflection (Anderson & Garrison, 1998 ) and it benefits motivation and feedback (Anderson, 2003 ). According to the students, a coach or mentor could serve as someone who keeps the student accountable regarding their competence development by providing feedback. This was in line with the view of the educational experts, who stated that interaction with a coach or mentor is essential throughout the different stages of reflective practice. Similarly, student-to-content interaction, for example, as offered within assessments, quizzes, simulations or games, can not only help students to apply theoretical knowledge and practice skills, but can also include feedback that informs students about their progress (Kasch et al., 2021 ).

Design principle 4 In order to gain new experiences, an OLP organised to provide reflective practices facilitates the undertaking and recording of a broad variety of learning activities that are related to both curricular courses and extra-curricular opportunities. These opportunities are supported by a blend of three forms of interaction (instructor-student, student-student, and student-content), in both online and offline settings.

4.1.5 Reflect in and on action

By applying newly learned knowledge or skills in different settings, students reflect in action, whereas reflection on action involves reviewing and evaluating past practices (Schön, 1983 ). This process results into new insights and perspectives regarding the initial situation of inner discomfort with respect to employability (Mezirow, 1981 ). Reflective journaling by means of e-mail, blogs, e-portfolios or participation in peer discussion forums can be supportive to reflection (Lai & Land, 2009 ). Knowledge sharing in the form of reviewing of activities by students through the sharing of experiences promotes collaboration and reflection (Charband & Jafari Navimipour, 2016 ; Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012 ). These studies support the view that the OLP should facilitate ongoing interaction between students after activities such as workshops.

Design principle 5 To foster reflection in and on action, an OLP organised to provide reflective practices facilitates opportunities for applying newly learned knowledge or skills in different settings and reviewing activities via reflective journaling and knowledge sharing.

4.2 Implications for practitioners

The findings inform practitioners by providing a kind of checklist that can be used when designing and implementing such OLPs.

4.2.1 Teacher professional development

In this study, we derived inductively from the experts’ opinions that embedding the development of employability competences into the curriculum and using an OLP that provides reflective practices also requires awareness among teachers about their own teaching skills. This observation implies that embedding employability skills and competences in the curriculum requires teachers to rethink their approach to the curriculum and its courses (Fallows, 2000 ). Good learning and employability intentions need to be supported by learning, teaching and assessment approaches that are consistent with curricular intentions (Abelha et al., 2020 ; Yorke & Knight, 2006 ).

4.2.2 Students’ action-oriented view vs. educational experts’ valuing of awareness and analysis of the current state

The results of this study suggested that students appeared to be more action-oriented with regard to reflective practice, whereas the educational experts paid more attention to awareness and analysing the current state. This orientation seems to fit with the role of the stakeholders concerned. Providing students with opportunities to gain experiences and to evaluate and to reflect on learning activities in the past is key for developing employability competences (Moon, 2004 ; Pool & Sewell, 2007 ). The teacher’s role can be related to seminal work by Dewey ( 1933 ), who stated that appropriate guidance consists of the teacher’s ability to provoke the mind of the learner by asking questions. In the context of technology for learning, Molin ( 2017 ) summarized three teacher roles: 1) the expert guide who helps students make connections with the learning goals, 2) the facilitator of pedagogical approaches fostering reflection and feedback and 3) the connector who helps students to understand the relevance of acquired knowledge beyond the classroom.

This observation does not necessarily mean that students are not aware. However, in the end, actions count more for students. A lesson might be for the coach to be aware to check on the ‘why’ (and less on the ‘what’), even if the ‘what’ is there, to be sure that actions are motivated.

4.3 Limitations and suggestions for further research

The design principles described in this study are grounded in both theory and the experiences of students and staff, and provide a framework for future research studying OLPs, their features and outcomes. The outcome of our thematic analysis was in line with and did gather evidence supporting the themes we defined a priori from the literature (Morgan, 2022 ). Moreover, two themes, “Online learning platform” and “Learner & Context”, were enriched inductively with the opinions from our participants. Future research may help to elaborate, confirm or reject them.

The current study was limited to a relatively small sample that covered two perspectives, a student and an educational expert perspective. According to (Krueger, 2014 ), a focus group consisting of four to six participants is easier to recruit and is more comfortable for participants, but offers less experiences compared to focus groups with more participants. Hennink and Kaiser ( 2022 ) argue that the number of focus groups is more relevant for reaching saturation in qualitative research than the number of participants per group. As this study focuses on a competence-based approach to employability, we did not include perspectives from other fields of expertise, such as employers of alumni or a more technically oriented view. Future research should expand the number of focus groups for students and educational experts and include focus groups for other perspectives as well, as they might result in additional insights regarding the design of an OLP that fosters employability competences.

In our study, the interviewees were recruited within one university, located in a western-European country that provides mainly campus-based education. During the interviews, participants had one particular platform in mind. Although using a particular example of an OLP has the benefit of bringing up more concrete thoughts during the focus group sessions, it also raises the question to what extent the design principles will apply to other higher education settings, such as fully remote, online universities, or hybrid forms of learning activities, and to other geographical areas with different cultural backgrounds. We suggest that future research aim at replication of the findings for different educational and cultural settings.

As we propagate three forms of interaction according to our fourth design principle, we suggest that future research addresses trustworthiness as a relevant factor for establishing a safe and reliable learning environment for students (Anwar, 2021 ). Trustworthiness can be evaluated based on factors such as the credibility and reliability of both users of the OLP (Alkhamees et al., 2021 ) as well as the information provided on the OLP (Hollenbeck et al., 2011 ), and to what degree the OLP (i.e. the concerning university) conforms to the latest security and privacy standards (e.g. the EU General Data Protection Regulation).

In the present study, focus group interviews revolved around the expected and perceived value of an OLP that fosters the development of employability competences. We did not quantify the actual use and value of such an OLP. Therefore, we suggest that future research includes a more quantitatively based approach, measuring the actual use and usability of OLPs. Quantitative data could be gathered via measuring the actual usage of the OLP, and via the use of existing validated questionnaires on reflective practice (Priddis & Rogers, 2018 ), reflection levels (Kember et al., 2000 ) and the usability or perceived value of an OLP (Ahmed & Ward, 2016 ), or via new, yet-to-be validated questionnaires.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Perry Heymann, Marloes Hukema, Peter van Rosmalen & Simon Beausaert

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    6. Design Assessments. In Instructional Design, assessments validate not only whether learners have understood the material but also whether they can apply it. So, in this step, you will have to go backward and evaluate each of the previous steps to see if they have grasped the learning goals as well as what they have to do to achieve them.

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    Graduates require employability competences, such as flexibility and team working skills, to gain and maintain employment. Online learning platforms (OLPs) can provide students with resources for reflection, which is a key competence for employability. However, little is known about the design of OLPs meant to provide reflective practices that foster students' employability competences. This ...