dual design

Giving a presentation last week - faculty asks, "Mike, when you say design, what do you mean?" Good question.

When discussing online course design, I'm tend to confuse instructional design with information design (and to complicate it even more -- information architecture). Lately, I've been trying to talk about design in two ways.

First, I address the basic concepts of instructional design. This is important because we want faculty thinking about their instructional strategies early on in the course design process. How are we going to instruct? What are the engagement opportunities? How are we going to assess?

Second, I address issues of organization and emphasize the concept of heuristic for the course space. How are we going to sequence the instructional blocks? What metaphor are we going to use to organize the content? What structures are imposed by the LMS?

I have to make an effort to keep these two aspects of course design separate and clear. I think faculty will be better able to work through our design/development model if we clearly differentiate between the types of design activities.