ABC Online Course Design Workshop

The goal of ABC Online Course Design is student-centred rapid course development. We are recommending this process for instructors looking to shift their course from in-person to online. This process is flexible enough to be used by:

Individual instructors
Instructor teams
Departments or programs

ABC Online Course Design Workshop, by Beth Hundey (Western University CTL), Michelle Schwartz and Curtis Maloley (Ryerson University CELT) is adapted from ABC Learning Design @UCL by Clive Young and Nataša Perović (2020) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

To participate in ABC Online Course Design, you only need a course outline and a set of course learning outcomes.

Workshop Structure

ABC Online Course Design consists of two components:

Pre-workshop activities, to be completed on your own (30 - 40 minutes)
A course storyboarding workshop, facilitated in Zoom or completed on your own (2 hours)

Workshop Outcomes

Create a storyboard of your current course design
Adjust your storyboard for an online or blended course design
Identify next steps for finishing your storyboard and using it for course development

Instructions for booking a Group ABC Online Design Workshop

If you have a group interested in a Zoom ABC Online Course Design workshop, and would like to book a special session, please fill out a Book a Group ABC Online Design Workshop form here

Email ctl@uwo.ca with the details of your consultation request

Name
Email
Role (faculty, staff etc.)
Faculty / Department
Reason (Book a Group ABC Online Design Workshop)

If you have not received a response to your inquiry within five business days, please email ctl@uwo.ca.

Reminder, the workshop can be completed any time asynchronously by following the instructions that follow.

The ABC workshop was developed by Clive Young and Nataša Perović at the University College London as a lightweight, streamlined process for designing courses based on sound educational principles. In 2016, Young and Perović modeled open educational practices by assisting a cross-institutional team to adapt their openly licensed materials for Ryerson University's semester layout and available tools.

The Centre for Teaching and Learning at Western University and the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Ryerson University have adapted these materials for the transition to remote and online instruction, and are available for individual and team use at both universities and beyond.

The importance of time

Whether you decide to complete the workshop independently, or join us for a synchronous zoom session for part 2, you will notice that we will pay close attention to time. We will encourage you to storyboard your course in broad brush strokes, and leaving the details for after the workshop. In a sense, you are an artist painting the general scene, leaving the fine brush and pen detail work for another time.

The process is intended to be iterative, so that once you have your storyboard created, you can adjust it how you like it. This may be different than how you are used to working, but it can be an efficient strategy for creating an initial course design. So, do the best you can to keep from getting "lost in the weeds" and keep at a course level overview.