The Planning phase is the foundation of an effective course. Instead of starting with what you want to teach, we start with what you want the student to achieve. This section guides you through the academically proven process of backward design.

Recommended Process for Course Creation (and Beyond)
We use a structured, three-phase cycle to ensure all courses meet the highest standards for instructional design, quality, and student engagement:
Phase 1: Planning (Design): Define outcomes, identify the audience, and build the structural blueprint (this section).
Phase 2: Production (Build): Record media, upload materials, and assemble the course in Grid.
Phase 3: Launch & Iteration (Review): Publish the course, monitor student performance, gather feedback, and continuously refine the content.

Choose Your Course Topic
Your course topic should balance your deep academic or professional expertise with market demand and institutional need.
Align with Expertise: Focus on an area where you hold specialized knowledge or research experience. Your passion and authority are essential to course credibility.
Validate Demand: Use institutional data, industry trends in South Africa, and student interest surveys to confirm the need for your specific subject area.
Identify the Problem: Ask: What tangible problem or knowledge gap will this course solve for the learner?

Define your Ideal Learner Audience
Designing a course for everyone is designing a course for no one. Clearly identifying your audience focuses your tone, complexity, prerequisites, and examples.
Prerequisite Knowledge: What knowledge or skills must the student possess before starting? (e.g., “Must be proficient in Python” or “No prior knowledge required”).
Motivation and Goal: Why is the student taking this course? (e.g., Career advancement, academic credit, personal hobby).
Audience Segmentation: Are you targeting undergraduates, working professionals seeking certification, or post-graduate researchers? This dictates the required academic rigor.

Create your Learning Objectives
Learning Objectives (LOs) are the specific, measurable statements of what the learner will be able to do by the end of the course. They are the most critical element of the planning process.
Start with Action Verbs: Use verbs aligned with Bloom’s Taxonomy (e.g., analyze, apply, create, evaluate), rather than passive verbs like understand or know.
Focus on Measurability: If you can’t measure it, it’s not an effective objective. An LO must directly inform how you assess student performance.
Hierarchy: Define both Course-Level objectives (the big picture) and Section-Level objectives (what the student will learn in a specific module).

Outline Your Course
Your outline translates your learning objectives into a logical, structured flow of content.
Structure: Organize your course into Modules (Sections/Chapters), which are composed of Lectures (Lessons).
Modularity: Ensure each lecture addresses a single, focused concept. Shorter lectures (5-10 minutes) generally promote better retention in online environments.
Logical Flow: The content should build sequentially, requiring the student to master basic concepts before advancing to complex application tasks.

Enhancing Learning with Practice and Assessment
Learning retention drastically improves when students are required to actively apply the knowledge they receive.
Formative Assessment: Integrate low-stakes practice activities within each lecture (e.g., short quizzes, comprehension checks, reflective prompts) to test understanding before a major grade is assigned.
Summative Assessment: These are high-stakes evaluations at the end of a module or course (e.g., graded projects, exams, written assignments). These must directly test the mastery of your defined SLOs.
Practice Activities: Include downloadable worksheets, code samples, case studies, or templates that students can use to apply skills immediately.

The Value of Scripting
Even if you teach extemporaneously in a physical classroom, scripting is crucial for high-quality online delivery.
Clarity and Conciseness: A script forces you to eliminate irrelevant tangents, ensuring you cover only essential information and stay within optimal lecture length.
Accessibility and Captioning: A complete script is the fastest, most accurate way to generate high-quality captions, which are mandatory for accessibility.
Production Efficiency: A script reduces re-takes during recording, saving significant time in the production and editing phases.

Create Accessible and Inclusive Learning Content
Designing for accessibility from the start ensures your course adheres to both institutional policy and ethical best practices.
Captioning: If video content includes captions, ensure they are accurate and synchronized captions.
Visual Aids: Utilize high-contrast text and visuals, and ensure all images and graphs used in slides have descriptive alternative text (alt-text) for screen readers.
Language: Use clear, concise language, avoiding unnecessary jargon. When discipline-specific terminology is required, ensure it is clearly defined.
Culturally Sensitive Examples: Ensure all case studies, examples, and cultural references are relevant and respectful to the diverse student population of South Africa or your respective country.

Here’s an example of a Course Blueprint