Building an Effective Course

The following outline utilizes best practices and FlexTraining system features to create an effective learning experience and successful knowledge transfer.  There are many ways to structure a course in FlexTraining, and this is just one suggestion.  Feel free to deviate as needed.

There are two import preparation steps:

1. Sketch out your course on paper or better yet, in Word or Powerpoint, to build the material and see the overall flow.

2. Place your media items - images, PDF's, videos, and any narrations into the appropriate FlexTraining library. You can always add them later as you build your lessons and screens, but it's more efficient to upload them now.  Make sure you understand the different purposes of the different libraries.  If you plan to use YouTube videos, make sure those are available in YouTube.

 

Sample Effective Course Flow

• Consider starting with a “Pre-test”. This will asses the learner's knowledge before she takes the course. If you want people to be able to skip the course and still receive credit if they already know the material, then make it a “Pre-Test-Out”.  

 

• Create Lessons – one per topic – of the following general structure:

 

1. A Title Screen, using the FlexTraining Title template
2. 2-5 “Learning Screens” using other templates: Text, Multimedia, External URL’s, YouTube videos.
3. A text/images template that includes a Learner Exercise, to reinforce learning.
4. Repeat (2) and (3) above until you have thoroughly covered the topic.

 

• Create a comprehensive “Post test” to assess whether the student has learned the material. Set a passing score and number of attempts allowed to be consistent with your goals and how rigorous you want to be in your testing policy.

 

• Course Evaluation – optional but usually a good idea. It displays for the student to complete when he has finished all the course lessons and tests.

 

Actual content within each lesson:

Introduction (objectives and reasons)

Attention

Motivation

Overview

Development (main body of content)

Organize material to build from…

- Past to present

- Simple to complex

- Known to unknown

- Frequently used to largely unused

Conclusion (relate to objectives)

Summarize key points

 

Of course, Learner Exercises are placed after every few Learning Screens.

Optional:  If you are using the "Instructor" features and have an Instructor you plan to assign to this course, you can also use assignments, which are graded by a human, not by the system.

 

Remember: You must SCHEDULE the course using the Schedule Course tab in the FlexTraining course builder before students can see or enroll in the course.