How to Design a Course

I was recently asked to participate in creating a new course.  That got me thinking about my strong opinions in this area and how they were shaped.

If you are an engineer with useful experience, you might (should!) want to pass along that experience.  You might do some coaching, write a paper, hold a conference, hold a workshop, etc.  One useful mechanism is to teach a course.  Teaching a course is especially appropriate when there is a substantial amount of information and that information is stable and codified.

If you are reading this you have had plenty of courses.  Some of them you enjoyed and (unless you have been very lucky) some you did not enjoy.  I think the maximum enjoyment comes when there is a good match between your desire/need for information and the instructor's ability to transfer the information to you in an interesting and efficient manner.   Some of this equation is dependent on the instructor in the classroom, but the course designer  is even more important.  They are frequently, but not necessarily, the same person.  Instructional design is a specialized topic, one not generally taught to engineers.  I spent 8 years in Shell dedicated full-time to designing and teaching a wide variety of engineering courses all over the world, plus 10 years before and after teaching as part of my job as an 'expert'.  

Class in Brunei

Along the way I was lucky to be able to learn from some great instructional designers (e.g. Mary Kennedy and Betty Collis) .  Educational design literature can be very academic and dull, but I will distill out a few things to get you started on designing your own course.

Simple Course Design Methodology

A great way to build a course is to:

1) Identify the audience.  

2) Write a good set of learning objectives

3) Create an assessment (test) based on the objectives, weighted with the appropriate percentages

4) Create the materials and practice problems for the students to be able to pass the assessment

I have built a lot of courses, most of them working with other Subject Matter Experts, and although it is possible to get there in other ways, in the end I always ended up wishing I had done things this  way. It saves a lot of iteration and re-work.

Audience

Who will you be teaching?  This will define where you need to start and how much information transfer you can expect to achieve in a given amount of time.  Consider also how you will handle a mixed audience.  Sometimes more experienced staff will want to attend a basic course (or vice versa!). Will you not allow them?  Will you co-opt them into helping you teach?  Will you form mixed-experience teams? Be ready even if you don't anticipate such problems.

Learning Objectives

Make a list of the things you are going to teach the students, but focus this list on the student.  Start the list "When the student finishes my course, they will be able to...".  Then make a list of objectives that start with verbs.  Use verbs and statements where you can easily assess whether or not your process of transferring information to the student has succeeded.  For example:

• List the pros and cons for each artificial lift method.  (15%)
• Select the most appropriate AL methods for a well given a description a set of data about the well and reservoir. (60%)
• Explain the primary surveillance methods and limitations for each artificial lift system, key optimization areas and recommended performance management strategies. (25%)

The verbs should be assess-able.  If you ask a student to 'list' pros and cons you can tell if they got that right or not.  'Understand' is a terrible verb, impossible to assess.  'Make student aware' is equally terrible. Try verbs like: Select, Design, Analyze, Optimize, Implement, List, Describe, Explain, State, Compare.  (There are lists of these verbs.)

Once you make the list of Learning Objectives, prioritize it.  Then, you can make an estimate of how much of the course should be devoted to each objective.  

Create the Assessment
If you created and prioritized the learning objectives, then you have simultaneously created a framework for assessments and scoring!  

For a learning objective such as:
Select the most appropriate AL methods for a well given a description a set of data about the well and reservoir. 
you can prepare various sets of data, and the assessment would be for the student to select the best AL methods for each and and explain how these were selected. Enough practice and they would be able to pass the assessment.  

For a learning objective such as:
List the pros and cons for each artificial lift method. 
you may want to have them to simply be able to create such a list from memory, e.g. List 5 pros for gas lift.  List 5 pros for ESPs.

Create the Materials
Break the assessments into steps.  Then, starting with the expected audience ask, What information do I need to supply for each step?  Consider also how you will pass on this information.  

Frequently this will result in a lecture that provides a walk-through of the procedures you would use to solve various problems.  The procedures will require basic information, (remember who, what, when, where, why, how).  Structure material with a beginning, middle and end.  Remember:
 Tell the audience what you're going to say, say it; then tell them what you've said.   
Dale Carnegie 

Variety
Information that is given by lecture will stay in short-term memory where it will be forgotten unless transferred into long term memory. The best way to make this transfer is to use the information in a variety of tasks.  In the classroom that means various exercises.  For engineers this usually means solving example problems using that information.

"...practicing on a variety of tasks will enhance and quicken the learning process as compared to practicing in the same category or class. " (link)

A good course will use a variety of instructional techniques.  Lecture (PowerPoint) is simple to create, but a steady diet of slides is boring.  Consider individual or group projects.  Try to match the instructional technique to the actual technique used in the workplace (e.g. groupwork, writing documents, using software).   

Courses are often confused with a lecture series.  A course that is simply a string of lectures by 'experts' is not a course.  I inherited a course that was like this which was very unpopular so that it was taught infrequently.  I could not bring myself to run the course as it was designed.  With some brainstorming help from a very creative and experienced instructional designer (Thanks again, Gerry Nicholson!), I completely redesigned the entire 2-week course into one based around talk show-style interviews and contests.  The course was very popular and also very effective.  I also removed the burden of lectures from the experts.  This also helped me maintain control of the content quality and pace, avoiding certain dangers present if you have no control of who might be an 'expert'. (Ever had your guest lecturer turn their back to the class and talk to the the white-board? Not fun.)

Lectures don't have to be based on slides either.  If you know what you are doing, you don't even need materials.  A colleague, Mike Gunningham, gave a Sand Control lecture for me  based on the Socratic Method and a cart full of screen and gravel samples.  Mike asked "What is Sand Control?" and sat there staring at the (uncomfortable) students until they started answering.  Fifty questions and answers later the class not only knew what Sand Control was, they were very well aware of a wide range of issues and options--the objectives of the session thoroughly accomplished without one slide!

Assessment and Certificates
I know very few professionals that want to be assessed in the classroom.  They say, the course is for developing their skills, not providing feedback on their performance. It takes away from course time.  It might require some additional study time.  It isn't fair. Etc., etc.  I have heard all the arguments and I do sympathize.  However, these same professionals (should) get periodic feedback on their work (staff report) and an end of course assessment is the same thing, feedback on their performance.  It also helps the instructor discover what truly went well and what did not, much more honestly than the standard 'happy form' that is given out at the end of most courses.

Assessments can include exams, but could also be combined with group project results, and post-course projects.  The idea is to simply ensure that the engineer's supervisor (the instructor) can trust that the engineer will almost certainly be able to accomplish what is given in the Learning Objectives (which is what the company paid for). So, how should you go about the assessment?  Imagine you were asked if a student can effectively use the information you provided.  How can you make sure of the answer in the most transparent, efficient way possible?  Answer that and you have found your assessment technique.

I know a lot of professionals that want a certificate at the end of a course.  I think that 'certificates of attendance' are purely sophomoric and I refuse to hand them out.  On the other hand, passing an assessment deserves some form of recognition.  I provided nice certificates printed in color that re-stated the Learning Objectives: "Tom demonstrated the ability to Select appropriate AL systems, Explain appropriate surveillance and performance monitoring techniques...".   I personally printed and signed these for each student that passed the assessment.  I think that 90% of the students were very pleased to have these and I liked handing them out.

Further Information
There is a huge amount of information about course design.  In the course of writing this I found that Carnegie Mellon has a simple, useful site with more information about course design.