Our Development Process

The process of developing training courses and MOOCs (massive open online courses) is similar to the process of developing any other online course at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It starts with identifying goals, objectives, and target audiences. Lectures are recorded with the help of audio producers. Interviews, roundtables, and other videos are recorded with the video team. However, training and MOOCs are not bound by as many requirements as traditional courses.

Open Education Course Development Workflow

There are six major steps in the development of an open education course when working with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL):

Getting started
Planning the course
Creating the content and activities
Implementing the course on the platform
Running the course
Evaluating, reflecting, and adjusting as necessary

You can learn more about each step on the Open Course Development Workflow page.

Timelines

Project timelines vary widely. They are impacted by several factors, including the faculty’s availability to engage in design and production, the number of stakeholders involved, and the volume of content that needs to be created. A typical project requires three to six months from the kick-off meeting to launch.

Responsibilities

The Role of the Instructor and/or Subject-Matter Expert (SME)

We can tailor MOOC development to your needs and skill set. It is typical for CTL to manage planning, production, and implementation so you can focus your efforts on instruction. However, we also support instructors who prefer a more do-it-yourself approach, in which the SME produces and uploads content and configures the course with oversight but minimal hands-on support from CTL. Regardless, there are some elements every instructor will need to learn about if they have never created an online course with CTL before:

Articulate the vision for the course
Provide subject-matter expertise
Record and otherwise provide necessary content

CTL’s Role

CTL will always be available to serve as the project manager and voice of the open education expert. Beyond this, CTL’s involvement will depend on the budget, timeline, learning platform, targeted audience, and other factors based on a course’s needs. CTL’s role may include:

Course instructional design: assessing learning needs, refining goals and objectives, overseeing course development, reflecting on course evaluation and more
Evaluation and possible repurposing of existing resources
Activity development: lectures, interviews, simulations, formative and summative assessments, etc.
Course promotion
Review of course analytics

To learn how to finalize the specifics of a partnership with CTL, review Getting Started.