Wow. It’s been a jam-packed module. But you’ve reached the final lesson. Well done you. We’re going to wrap things up by talking about how you can ace the planning and creation of your assignments and resources.
Because if you cast your mind back to the module on curriculum design, you met those three basic building blocks: lessons, assignments and resources.
We’ve just spent a good slice of this module learning how to plan and create great lessons, so now it’s time to turn our attention to those other two building blocks.
And if you’re wondering why we’re covering both in a single lesson when lessons were given so much course time, it’s because they’re simpler, and because some of what you learned about lessons applies here too.
Assignments
Let’s start with assignments and remind ourselves of their basic purpose. An assignment is a way of guiding a student through a chunk of work they need to do to get a step closer to their end result. You may recall that assignments usually emerge from one of the mid-level chunks of doing work in your cascade.
To frame it with an example, let’s say your course is all about helping people land their dream job. One assignment might be to get students to rewrite their resume based on what you’ve just taught them in the lessons.
It’s like “you’ve learned the theory, now go and do the practice”.
The big question here is: how deep and detailed do you need to go with your assignment instructions?
Do you just give your students the high-level objective and let them get on with it? Or do you break it down into detailed steps they can diligently follow from beginning to end?
The answer depends on a few factors: your lesson content, your average student’s capabilities and even your preferred teaching style.
If your lessons already have a good amount of execution detail and your students are mostly a confident bunch, your assignment instructions can be fairly simple: just a high-level description of what you want people to do.
But if your lessons are lighter on the detail side or your students are more beginner level, you’re going to need to provide more detail to ensure they don’t get stuck.
How deep should you go?
Regardless of how detailed you decide to go, there are really three areas you need to cover in your instructions: the WHAT, the WHY and the HOW.
The what is the assignment outcome – in other words, what does “done” look like?
The why is some kind of explanation or justification about why the outcome is necessary for success.
And the how is how you expect students to go about the task of actually achieving that outcome.
Already you should start to see similarities with the lesson plan we used to spec out your lessons. In fact, I’ll give you an equivalent template you can use - or you can do it more informally.
Because even covering all three of those bases, you can keep things very simple if you like. Going back to the resume example, you could have something like this:
Assignment: Write Your Resume
If you’re going to land your dream job, you’ll need a killer resume. Using the principles you learned in the lesson, create a draft of your brand new resume.
It’s just two sentences but they cover the what (create a draft of your new resume), the why (because you’ll need a killer resume to land your dream job) and the how (use the principles from the lesson).
Of course, if you want to you can get into more depth and provide a set of detailed steps that students should follow.
It’s a balancing act. Personally, I like to make sure my students know exactly what I expect them to do, so I tend to give more detailed instructions. But I also know that if the instructions are too long, people may assume the assignment itself will be hard work and be put off from getting started.
Which brings up another question: what content format should you choose for your assignments? Do you need to create a video, or can you get away with just some text on a page?
My preference is to give written instructions. It’s easier for students to go back and review the information. But if you have a strong preference for video, you could explain the assignment in a video and also provide a text summary to refer to later.
Resources
Turning now to resources, let’s just quickly remind ourselves of exactly what we mean by a resource.
In my view, a resource is any additional piece of content you include in your course that supports your lessons and assignments. It’s something that makes the learning or the doing either easier or faster for the student.
A resource is often a downloadable file, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve created a list of resource ideas you can refer to to understand some of the many possibilities.
Some resources are optional in the sense that students can use them if they want and ignore them if they don’t.
Other resources may be more essential. In other words, students will struggle without them.
Sometimes a resource is just an effective way to break out some of the lower-level detail that would otherwise clog up a normal lesson.
Keep in mind there are two types of resources – internal and external. Internal resources are usually created by you and hosted within your course. External ones are usually created by someone else and you reference or link to them elsewhere.
When it comes to creating your resources it’s difficult to give general advice because they come in so many different flavours. But we can still use the what, why, how framework to make sure each resource is clear in your mind before you start:
- WHAT is the nature of this resource? (Template, checklist, etc.)
- WHY should it be included? (What becomes easier or faster as a result?)
- HOW will you pull it together (Reuse existing materials, outsource it, etc.)
When you create your resources, try to be as pragmatic as possible. Unless the presentation aspect is crucial (e.g., it’s a design template), keep everything as simple as possible and focus on function over form.
You can always smarten things up in later versions of your course when you know which resources students find most valuable.
And That’s Content Creation, Folks!
Okay, that’s the last of the lessons on content creation. Don’t worry if it takes a little time to build your confidence. It’s a totally normal part of the course builder’s learning curve and the skills you learn will serve you for years to come.
See you in the next module!