Curriculum development is one of the core areas of my job as an instructional designer. I’ve written and developed a range of instructor led training content, self-paced distance learning content, and assessments. In many cases, I have worked with subject matter experts (SMEs) on curriculum development projects to ensure that the content is accurate and high quality. However, I have also had to develop curriculum without a specific SME—blending information from a range of sources into instructionally sound content.
I develop curriculum for the following audiences:
- Instructor led training (ILT) (3 hour training sessions)
- Product certifications (Multi-day training sessions)
- Product certification assessments
- Self-paced distance learning videos (2-10 minutes)
Tools that I use with curriculum development:
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- TechSmith Snagit (image capture)
- SharePoint (document management and versioning)
- JIRA (project management and time tracking)
Agendas
In my current role as a Sr. Instructional Designer for PowerSchool, we design customer-facing curriculum. Once we have defined a training need, our curriculum development process begins with an agenda. In this phase, I summarize the key topics and subtopics (heading 1, heading 2, and heading 3 titles) that will be in the curriculum. Additionally, I include information about the target audience and a description of the curriculum.
Source Documents
After key stakeholders review and approve the agenda, I create a source document(s) to contain the instructional content. The source document can range in size and format based on the type of instruction. The source document plays an important role in the life cycle of an instructional resource because it retains the history of changes made to the document (using a document management system like SharePoint).
Examples of source documents that I have created include:
- Workbooks
- Job aids and quick reference cards
- Instructor led resources (presentations and handouts) for conferences
- Curriculum for instructor led courses (3+ hours of content)
- Curriculum for self-paced distance learning courses and modules
