The educational design cycle is an iterative planning tool. [1] This section lists and explains this tool. It consists of seven steps, namely:
Establishing the Focus of the Programme
In voter and civic education, this focus has already been determined in its most general form. The mandate or mission (see The Educational Mandate) of the educator will confirm and restrict this focus.
This focus is essential in determining the area within which initial analysis will be done of the intended target constituency. Without this, educators will founder. Focus should not be confused with educational objectives. These must still be established.
Understanding the Learners and Their World
Educators need to understand and enter the world of the learners. This is particularly true of educators who come from the outside, but it is also necessary for educators who consider themselves to be part of this world. They need to develop the reflective distance that comes with studied analysis.
The analysis will attempt to discover basic information, as well as uncover a set of educational needs.
Understanding the Available Resources
In addition to understanding the world of the learners, educators need to know what resources are available to them. Such an understanding ensures that the objectives set for the programme are realistic and achievable within the framework of the available resources.
There is likely to be an ongoing dialogue between the available resources and the intended objectives. To begin with, educators are likely to overestimate what can be achieved, or they may be expected by others to deliver too much. Some adjustments inevitably must be made, and are best made during the assessment and design phase rather than during the implementation phase.
Selecting Educational Objectives
During this period of the design, educators should discuss potential message statements, generative themes, and establish a set of programme objectives that are WARM: Worthwhile, Action oriented, Realistic, and Measurable (see Educational Objectives)). These objectives are couched in language that puts the learner at the centre of the programme.
To ensure that the programme can be evaluated, a set of indicators should be created to mark the achievement of these objectives.
- Primary and Supplementary Objectives. In a complex programme, it is likely that the objectives set are the primary objectives. To complete the design a set of supplementary objectives need to be established. At the end of the design, it could be described as an objectives tree. For example, in order that "voters in the rural north will be able to vote with confidence," they may need "to find their way to the correct voting station," "be able to handle a pen," and "understand the role of political parties in a democracy."
- The Objectives Tree. Some educators consider this objective tree to be the most fundamental aspect of educational design. Others find it superficial in its belief that all likely educational outcomes can be determined in advance of interaction with learners. It is used most often when the proposed educational programme is highly skills based, and when the curriculum is predetermined rather than generative.
Voter and civic education falls somewhat in the middle. It does require technical skills, but also has a generative component.
However, all those supporting such a programme (donors and other stakeholders) will require a description in advance of what is intended, and educators should be able to state their intentions also for adult learners who have a right to know the likely outcome of their interaction with the educator.
A detailed set of objectives, written in appropriate and specific language, is essential.
Those who operate primarily on the establishment of messages or generative themes can find it possible to communicate these. What counts is not the first communication, but the change in knowledge, behaviour, or attitude of the recipient or learner. Education is about change, not only about sending messages into the ether.
Designing the Programme
When the objectives have been framed, educators should begin the design process. This process should include the macro design: a blocking out of the whole programme according to a logical and chronological framework.
Many educators have some experience of doing this for a single group of learners: a timetable is such a macro design.
Macro Design. But the macro design required for a national programme consists of a much more detailed outline. This is likely to include a range of what might be considered timetables for sets of extended training courses, blocking of time for broadcast material, overall estimations of the number of events to be organized, and the sequence in which these will be offered. This design puts together all the information collected about potential programme elements. It is to be based on a general strategic paradigm, and it attempts to conform to the available resources by being neither overly ambitious nor too timid.
Micro Plans. The second aspect of educational design is the development of micro plans. Such micro plans or detailed designs can be likened to lesson plans, but because they are likely to consist of programmes that vary in time, in site, in method, and contain a range of options or Educational Strategy Development, calling them lesson plans is hardly appropriate.
These are done in part before a programme beginning, and also during the implementation phase. Detailed design of this nature is a tedious process, but it is offset by the impact of such a carefully designed programme on learners and on the ability of the education programme to make use of educators and materials producers who are not highly qualified educators.
Designers will attempt to ensure that each aspect of the programme conforms to learning theory, is matched carefully to what is known about the learners, and can be achieved within the time, in the place, and with the staff, educational, and financial resources available.
The reason why certain of these detailed or micro designs are done before implementation is that they are determinative of the materials to be produced. It is not enough to prepare a set of materials and then work out ways to convey this material.
It is far better to determine the educational design and then prepare materials for that design. It is more cost effective because the material produced is limited in scope to that level and amount of content required. It also is prepared in the form required.
When existing materials are available and must be used (perhaps a manual or a textbook), designers should consider the best ways to adapt that material to the particular context in which they will work (see Assessing and Adapting Existing Materials).
Programme Implementation
At this point, it might be considered that educational design has ended, but in fact the implementation phase is the moment at which the programme is tested and further lessons are learned. Some of these lessons must be immediately implemented; others may have to wait for the next cycle.
In educational programming, while there may be a pilot phase during which materials are tested and adapted, there is some sense in which the whole programme needs to be open to innovation and adaptation in order to better ensure that the outcome intended is achieved.
Evaluators might prefer that a programme run as scheduled, and that any variations from the plan become apparent. People cannot, however, be experimented with. If it becomes apparent that a programme, whether in the overall or in a particular aspect, is not meeting people's needs and is not appropriate for achieving the stated objectives, it needs to be changed as soon as possible.
Programme Evaluation and Preparation of the Next Cycle
On completion, the cycle moves through an evaluation phase and into an even better understanding of the learners and their world, and of the resources available to the educator. The cycle has returned to its beginning.
In voter and civic education, such a cycle may be used to describe a large national programme. It could easily also be used to describe a small aspect of the programme.
It is likely that educators in different parts of the programme and in different organisation within the general programme network may go through their own versions of the cycle.
An educator given the task by the macro programme of conducting a programme for women in an inner-city environment in a modern state has to enter their world, determine their needs, set objectives for the particular programme, design it, implement it, evaluate it and either themselves, or with others prepare for future educational interventions with the same constituency.
Notes:
[1] The word "iterative" is used in the sense of a process that is partly linear, one step follows another, and partly circular. There are times when a step or set of steps has to be repeated as more information is available or changes have to be made.
