Module 3: Quality course structure and content
3.8 Summary: Learner-centred course structure and content
As you structure your course and develop your content, think about what your learners need in order to learn successfully. Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction provides a useful framework for creating the conditions for successful learning in your course. Here’s how we’ve applied this framework in this module:
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Module summary activity: Reflect and plan
Reflect on your learning
We’ve given you a lot to take in!
Take a moment to reflect: What are you already doing to incorporate Gagné’s Events 1 (Gain attention), 4 (Present the content), and 9 (Enhance retention and transfer) into your own teaching practice?
Think about:
Your course structure
- Have you structured your course in a way that makes learning materials and assessments easy for learners to find?
- Are modules and topics clearly labelled and organized?
- Are activities and assessments well-paced across the term?
Your course content
- Does your content align with your course learning outcomes and build on your learners’ prior knowledge?
- Have you included strategies to capture your learners’ attention, especially when introducing new topics?
- Have you provided opportunities for learners to practice working with content?
- Is the content presented in ways that avoid cognitive overload and help learners select, organize, and integrate new knowledge with prior learning?
- Are learning materials accessible to all learners?
- Have you included strategies to enhance learning retention and transfer?
- Have you made use of relevant open educational resources (OERs)?
Plan next steps
What steps do you need to take to ensure that you are setting your learners up for success in your course?
Congratulations on completing Module 3 of this course!
Select Next in the footer at the very bottom of the screen to navigate to the Resources for Further Study section, which offers deeper dives into particular topics addressed in the module, or continue to Module 4!
