edX Designing
What developmental model is used to design on this platform?
All right, so in terms of the developmental model, we use when designing things in the edX platform. Our team is very backward, design-focused. So and almost all things we do, we apply the Backwards Design structure laid out and Understanding by Design with a heavy focus on Bloom's Taxonomy as well so that we make sure that course content is appropriately structured and scaffolded and that it is hitting sort of a broad range of student’s abilities. And also, we always wanna make sure that the assessments that we have been measuring the most real-life tasks that students could be performing. And that all the learning activities are in service to developing those tasks so that they can pass the assessment. We don't use the Addie model or anything like that with this course is due to the very academic nature of all of the content we have in edX, just a heavy focus on backward design in Bloom's Taxonomy.
What design process is used on this platform?
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So the overall design process for us when building a course in edX, I'll start with the time-frame. Typically we have, at best, we have about 10 to 12 weeks to develop a course that's going to run for about 14 weeks or so. And that's, that's the best-case scenario. We have developed some courses even faster. But when we have about 10 to 12 weeks, we have our designer. So it's actually our subject matter expert, which is typically a faculty member. They meet and consult with us. We go over how to use the edX platform, the different things they can do in there. And then we give them all of our templates and materials that will help them to communicate with our team. And then they really go, and they develop the bulk of the content. And then they send that over to us. We review it, we talk about it, and then we put the draft into the platform, and then we send that back to them, and they give it one last look. And making any final changes or edits. And then that ends up being the content that goes into the platform. So it's really a back and forth. It's a conversation. We do use some standardized templates just to help again with the modular nature of edX, the platform sort of has a language all its own. So we do use our templates to communicate, but it's very much an open dialogue. We typically have regular weekly meetings with faculty. Sometimes we'll even involve the facilitator. Who's going to be facilitating an upcoming course? You get them in ahead of time to get them used to things and to see the design process. So it's really a back and forth between subject matter experts providing the materials and then us as instructional designers interpreting and finding the best way to get that material out to the students.
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What are a few challenges in this process?
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I'd say the biggest challenge as far as the process of developing for the edX courses is in the modular nature of the platform. Because edX supports a very, very modular structure, it requires these things called sections, subsections, units, and components. Essentially what it means is that when instructors are building content, they can't really build in a lot of branching, they can't build in branching things. And they can't have students linking out to different places. It all needs to be tackled in a fairly linear way. In fact, in their documentation at edX, they recommended that what they called a unit, which is what we would think of as a webpage that be its own self-contained mini-lesson. So that's kind of something that is that faculty can struggle with when they have to sort of block out their content in a way that it can be assembled in the edX platform. Another challenge is that there's a lot of stuff at the edX platform simply can't do at this point, or that it was not built for because of its origin as a MOOC platform. It doesn't have very robust tools or systems for instructor control. For example, grading. Its great book is not, as it doesn't have the kind of features you might expect from a typical LMS grade book. Assignment types are very limited. And because the platform is so open, when you're designing a course, you have to assume that at any given point, there could be hundreds of students in that course, which is going to limit the amount of things you are able to do. Requiring a one-page essay, for example, with 300 students, creates a situation where suddenly you can't grade the work that you're requiring. edX has ways around this from back, inherent to the platform from back during its MOOC days; for example, peer grading was on the way they got around huge grade loads. But auto-grading is usually the solution. That means that assessments in the course typically need to be multiple-choice, fill in the blank, some sort of format that can be auto-graded, which again limits us as designers and limits the subject matter experts in what they're able to do and provide. And I'd say those are probably the two biggest challenges with working with this platform.to have videos made. So we have the resources on the team that help us meet the challenges of working and designing with these instructors.
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