A tale of two courses – structured vs unstructured – what happens next?
Dr. Daniel Andrews, The University of Melbourne.
While it’s not an educational buzz word, there is nothing more important to a course than the course structure!
We all want the best educational outcomes for our students but there may be a component of your course that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The course structure.
Let’s imagine two different courses. They both aim to delivery similar educational outcomes and they use similar teaching methods. Why then might a student feel happy and motivated in one course, and in the other feel lost and disillusioned. The answer lies in the course structure, or perhaps the lack of structure.
Creating a course with a good structure is akin to giving each student a lantern to navigate their way through a windy dark passage. Without a lantern, it’s no wonder many students will stumble along the way. Even those that do make it through may be quite resentful that their journey was made unnecessarily difficult.
In a well-structured course the students have a clear understanding of what is expected of them and how they should go about achieving it.
Making the course structure visible to students
The course structure should be visible within every activity, assessment and piece of learning material, with each having a clear and transparent purpose. Everything in the course is connected. No matter what part of the course the student engages with they should easily understand its relevance, the learning goals (or success criteria) and how it fits into the wider course.
It is useful to make the course structure as explicit to students as possible. For example, flow charts can be used to show how different parts of the course are connected, including the assessment tasks. Similarly, visualisations of the expected student activity in a given week can be useful.
An unstructured course is a disorganised course
On the other hand, a course with little structure can quickly become a nightmare for students. The connections between the different sessions in the course (e.g. lectures, workshop and practical) may be unclear, or worse yet, there may be no connection at all. In such a course, it may even be a challenge for students to understand what they were meant to have learnt from each learning session. Perhaps worst of all, without knowing what is expected of them, the students may begin to feel lost. These feelings of frustration can quickly lead to apathy and eventually lead to poor student outcomes.
Even if the learning materials and methods used to deliver a course are great, if the students don’t understand the purpose of the learning activities and how the different parts of the course are connected, their learning journey is made unnecessarily difficult and likely unfulfilling.
Communicate your course structure to students
Of course, having a solid and transparent course structure requires the educators to spend some time on determining how the different parts of the course fit together, which may lead to some redesign. Once the educators have decided on the course structure, it is important to consider how best to communicate this to students. We should take every opportunity to show students how all the components of the course connect to form a coherent whole. After all, a happy and content student is one who understands why they’re doing what they’re doing, so let’s push them in the right direction.
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