Archetype learning Design 101

our 4-week class that teaches the fundamentals of building a great learning experience  

This course gives you structure, guidance, and inspiration for building a great learning experience.  Whether you are designing online learning modules or a hybrid learning program, this course teaches you the fundamentals of learning design and shares the results of decades of experience designing transformative learning across diverse fields, while also sharing the best of today’s online learning strategies. The fundamentals of creating clear, engaging, user-friendly learning remain a constant that no amount of marketing can fake.  Build a high quality class for your organization, school, or business in 4 self-paced weeks, and get a 45-minute coaching and feedback session when you reach week 3. Leave with a finished class ready to beta test.  

Course Schedule

Week 1:  Clarify Your Goals and Learning Objectives

The first thing to think about is purpose.  Why are you creating this class?  What do you and you team need it to do for YOU?  These are your goals, which are the guiding reason for your work.  Decide what these are before you get started.  After that, decide what your learning objectives are for your students.  What do you need them to learn?  This is your guiding star in terms of content and strategy decisions. This first week gives you some preliminary ideas about how to develop goals and objectives, and guides you in pinning down your ideas. 

Week 2: Match Learning Strategy to Content

Most people begin with content, when they should begin with learning objectives.  This week we discuss how people learn, the special ways we need to reach out online, and how to develop content to help students be successful in meeting the learning objectives.  It does’t matter whether your learning objective is mastery of complex skill or concept, or development of personal habit and fulfillment, the way to develop good content is to consider how people learn and how to match good teaching strategies to content development. 

Week 3: Decide on Technology and Focus on Engagement

Choosing the technology to reach your goals and engage your students is a make or break decision for most online courses.  Whether you choose webinars or video, a forum, your own LMS, an online course hosting service, audio, quizzes, groups, membership — there are a lot of options and it is very overwhelming for many.  This week we focus on two things: the bottom line that you discovered when describing your goals for the course, and the engagement your students will need in order to learn.  We guide you through using these two signposts as you clarify your choices for tools and resources for your students.  We also share ways to try things out, beta test, make sure your course is a part of a larger project or business, and more.  This week, you finish your learning plan and schedule a coaching session.  

Week 4: Prototype and Beta Test

Build your course! We help you with a plan and guide to building.  Julia shares the beta testing and site redesign process she uses with her clients. Her process, based in design thinking, helps you listen to your students, teachers, and collaborators, and gain insight into what your users are telling you about their experience in your courses.  We also cover quizzes, data reporting, and other ways to track your learners’ progress.  You finish well on your way to building your course, with solid feedback, and a tried and tested plan for creating real learning.  

About Your Instructor

Julia Hammond, PhD is a Principal and the Director of Instructional Design at Archetype Learning, where she leads their learning design projects for the public sector, business, universities, and schools.  She was an Applied Liberal Arts Professor at the Art Institute in Portland, Oregon for ten years, where she taught writing, applied humanities, and design thinking. She worked as the Assistant Director of Composition at the University of Oregon, and has taught at the UO, Southern Illinois University and Portland State University.  She was the founding director of the ArtCare program at St. Anthony Foundation, a program that uses art and narrative to help low-income and homeless adults in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District to share what they know and understand themselves and their stories.