The Course Development Process
University of Maryland University College
The course development process described below describes the division of labor among the team members and provides a general overview of the work flow. Timelines are generated from this schema, so you should become familiar with this summary to understand how your work is integrated into the process as a whole.
Step 1:
The course development team meets to define course scope, focus, and goals. The target audience is defined, and pre-requisite skills and the place of the course in the curriculum are described. Team members begin selecting texts and other course materials (print and non-print). The roles and responsibilities of each team member are clearly delineated. A timeline is negotiated. Standards for writing and format are clarified.
Step 2:
The author/content expert drafts the course goals, introduction, and outline of the course.
Step 3:
The goals, introduction, and outline are reviewed by the team members. The instructional designer compiles all comments and gives feedback to the author/content expert, who revises the documents.
Step 4:
Upon approval of the revised goals and outline, the author/content expert drafts the overviews and objectives for all units.
Step 5:
The goals and outline are reviewed by the team members. The instructional designer compiles all comments and gives feedback to the content expert, who revises the overviews and objectives.
Step 6:
Upon approval of the revised overviews and objectives, the author/content expert drafts the first unit.
Step 7:
The first unit, including review and integrating questions and answers, is reviewed by the team. The team critiques the unit for style and format as well as content, thus allowing the author/content expert to obtain appropriate feedback before starting to write the bulk of the guide.
Step 8:
The author/content expert makes revisions and submits the revised unit to the instructional designer on a disk. The disk is downloaded by the word processing staff to create a master copy and the disk is returned to the author/content expert. No revisions to the unit can be made after this step unless submitted to the instructional designer on hard copy, which will be input to the master copy by the word processing staff.
Step 9:
The author/content expert drafts the additional units and other sections and submits them to the team in blocks according to the agreed-upon timeline. (Note that the units are submitted as they are written. This makes the review process more manageable and allows for adequate rewrite time before the final deadline. The content expert should make every effort to adhere to the established schedule when submitting units in order to avoid a "work crush" for all team members as the final deadline nears.)
Step 10:
The material submitted is reviewed by team members and the feedback is given to the author/content expert. The same process as in Step 8 is followed. Note that while the team reviews the units submitted, the author/content expert should continue working on the next group of units, to avoid losing time waiting for a reply from the team.
Step 11:
The complete guide undergoes a final review by the whole team, the author/content expert makes any last revisions, and the changes are made by the word processing staff. The author/content expert writes a syllabus for the course.
Step 12:
The editor reviews all materials for consistency, punctuation, grammar, and format.
Step 13:
All team members officially sign off on the project; the project is not considered complete until this is done.