Redesigning course design standards

We've always tried to systematize successful experience into a set of standards to be respected. This speeds up production processes and facilitates product distribution, since users don't have to relearn how to use them each time.

Education is no exception. Courses at the same institution are often formalized and have a standard presentation and flow, which are integrated into the institution's operations and with which students and teachers are familiar.

But while standards of presentation may well be standardized, as a result of the media, standards of course design are in the process of being completely overhauled.

New contexts, new approaches

In his article " Les problématiques de conception en formation à distance ", Jean-François Bourdet explains how

• the explosion in the number of educational resources, and even of the notion of "educational resource",
• the acquisition of tracking data, leading to the personalization of learning paths,
• the unpredictability of interactions between students and content,
• the variety of effects generated that cannot be planned and exploited,
  

These factors make conventional course programming impossible, or at the very least unsatisfactory, and upset the balance on which the design of distance learning systems was based.

Jean-François Bourdet presents three challenges to the logic of course design:

• "First challenge: the transition from closed systems to open systems.
  
  The fragmentation of the notion of resources and the multiplication of real-life journeys mean that we need to move beyond ODL-type approaches, which are still based on the definition of coordinated systems. However, the unpredictability of these systems is too great for curricular management.
  
  
• The second challenge is the transition from algorithmic to fractal logic.
  
  The former is built on computational effects (orderly design, tracking modes, standardized validation of learning), it develops in a curricular construction mode and corresponds fairly well to the notion of operating rules, hence the image of the algorithm. If the number of unknowns increases, the algorithm no longer works.
  
  The device can no longer be described as a system, but in terms of the effects developed from an element that may well be proposed (e.g., a learning activity, a localized resource), but whose scope remains uncertain for the prescriber. Indeed, the latter is rooted in an individual path that cannot be described in programming terms. Designers therefore need to envisage encounters between elements and paths, rather than between elements themselves, as is the case with linear curricular logic.
  
  
• Third challenge: to move from a logic of component arrangement to a reading in the form of a kaleidoscopic recomposition: the encounter of one element causes the configuration of all the others present in a field at a given moment to change.
  

In short, the stable models to which we used to refer are losing their primacy to the possibilities of interaction. It's almost a return to the uniqueness of the educational experience: the course I took is different from the one you'll take. Its interest depends on the individuals taking it, the educational resources available at the time and the effort we put into it.

Illustration: Rawpixel - ShutterStock

Reference

Les problématiques de conception en formation à distance : Logiques et contextes du web. - Jean-François Bourdet - Distances et Médiations des Savoirs (DMS), 2014,
http://dms.revues.org/808