12 Days of Course Design

Seek feedback from colleagues

If you've been following our advice thus far, we're hopeful that you should be fairly happy with the current state of your course: the content, the assignments and collaborations, the structure, the materials and reading list, etc.

However, when you're immersed in any given activity for long periods of time it's normal for you to get accustomed to what you're seeing and thus miss small details that someone else should be able to pick up straight away. Not only that, but it's very easy to slip into an unconscious level of subject expertise by using phrases or acronyms and assumed knowledge that may make things harder for students.

Getting your final work peer reviewed

So once your course is finished, ask a colleague to peer review your course! This does not need to be - and in many cases shouldn't be - someone who works alongside you or someone who works in the same area as you do, but someone from an associated topic area with sufficient subject knowledge to be able to advise but not so much as to miss the same details you might overlook or fall into the same familiar language patterns. A neutral third party, if you will; someone who somewhat understands what they're looking at and thus is able to offer valuable feedback.

If this is a refresh from a course that you previously launched, you could also ask a small group of learners (eg. course representatives from the previous year) to review the course as well, thus getting a learner's perspective and feedback.

Trust your gut!

Always remember though: at the end of the day, YOU are the subject expert, so don't feel pressured into acting on every single change your peer reviewers suggest. Reviews like this are aimed to share best practice in learning design and should be shared in that context.