Setting up a course for a new product
For the purpose of an example product for this chapter, I have selected the open source ePortfolio product Mahara fromhttp://www.mahara.org.
Before you set up a course it is important to know what the goals of the training are; that is, what are the learning objectives for each part of the course. Traditionally this has been done for face to face with a curriculum structure of a Scheme of Work. This becomes the map which you configure your online course with.
Below we will go through a sample extract from a Scheme of Work for an introduction course on a product called Mahara. This is an online product used for e-Portfolios, but this approach can work for all product types.
There are many layouts used for creating a Scheme of Work for a class, but they all generally cover the structure and the content of a course.
There are two key aspects of the Scheme of Work structure.
Firstly, there is an overall summary section; this abstracts all the objectives and reasons for the course. Some of the data it usually includes is:
- Module Name
- Module Level (This can be a standard set of definitions or a custom scale such as basic, intermediate, and advanced)
- Requirements and Assumptions
- Technical Requirements (The requirements for a course online are often different to those offline. Are you using technologies which they will need such as Flash? Will they need MS Office or PowerPoint? Will they need a microphone or speakers?)
- Required Outcomes
There can be a lot more options here and you may have an organizational standard already as to what information is recorded. Below is an example of the Scheme of Work's first page:
Secondly, there is the summary detail of each distinct lesson. This summary is usually enhanced greatly for the full lesson plan. This is often a table with a number of columns:
Having this basic information is really helpful as it can be used as the map for the online course. Following is a brief sample of content for the second page of the Scheme of Work as outlined above.
