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  • General

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    • And so, ‘tis the season!

      The firelogs are crackling, the chill has fallen upon us and the marshmallows are poised and ready for the toasting! And to commemorate the start of the festive winter season, we decided to bestow you all with the best gift there is - the gift of knowledge! Course design knowledge, to be precise.

      Starting today and up until the 16th of December, our e-Learning experts at Catalyst EU will be sharing 12 top tips to refresh your course design. How to keep your content organised and up to date, fostering collaborative learning, helping your students to stay engaged and on-track, and much, much more!

      Each day we will reveal the next step on how to enhance your course, so make sure to check back every day, and please do share your work - the more the merrier! And if you have any questions please reach out using the #12DaysOfCatalyst hashtag on Twitter or LinkedIn; we’ll be more than happy to help you with your course design needs.

  • Day 12

    • 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.


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    • Suggested by Richard Oelmann, Head of Business Development