Recently, members of the CLT had the pleasure of hosting an ABC Learning Design workshop with colleagues from the School of Management, including staff from Finance and Law, employability and placements, student engagement, and marketing.
The workshop attendees appreciated being able to work together in the same room with a framework to lead their discussions and stimulate creativity in their learning design.
What is ABC?
ABC Learning Design is a rapid, collaborative curriculum development method created by Clive Young and Nataša Perović at UCL. It uses structured activities to help educators design blended and online courses based on Diana Laurillard’s conversational framework approach.
This is a learning design model that has been used at institutions across the UK and internationally since 2015 and is considered an effective mode to sprint design new and existing courses through shared language, activity-based learning type cards and a narrative driven storyboard.
Design teams have 90 minutes to conceptualise, storyboard their units, whilst also mapping assessment points and alignments to curriculum principles.
How did the design teams’ benefit?
In all, the design teams were able to storyboard six new units for their proposed course. In groups of three or four, together with support from other functions in the university, they were able to discuss the best approach to planning teaching and assessment within their own units and make connections with other unit teams in the course, ensuring that everyone was able to see the bigger picture of what students will be experiencing.
This identified some interesting correlations that wouldn’t otherwise have been picked up as early had the designers not been together. For instance, as unit teams shared their storyboards with each other, it became apparent that a lot of group assessment was being planned across the units. With this insight the course team was able to adjust and balance the scaffolding and assessment of group work more effectively through the course.
Could ABC help you?
ABC could help you with:
- Redesigning units in a course with a structured approach to ensure a balanced mix of activities that engage students and align with learning outcomes.
- Designing a new interdisciplinary course with well-integrated blend of online and in-person components.
- Integrating skills development, graduate attributes, curriculum principles or learning technology into a new or existing course.
If you feel that an ABC workshop could be useful for your own course team, details of the workshop and booking information can be found on the CLT Teaching Hub: ABC Overview.
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