Part 3 (continued): Harness technology

Before I tackle Design Documents I have a few more thoughts on using technology to get the best of meetings that are designed to gather learning content with your academic(s).

Bizarrely you start with marker pens and big sheets of paper.  This is good, it’s always reliable, cheap and helps with the creative process.  However, once that initial brainstorming of ideas is underway there are some readily available and really useful technologies that can be harnessed to enhance the design and development process of your MOOC.

1.  Video the design sessions.  This is immensely powerful.  Simply get a smartphone or tablet and record your academic “doing their stuff” explaining things on big sheets of paper.  capture all of the nuances of the conversation.  I've used my smartphone and tablet to make these quick videos and I've published them to my cloud storage to watch later when I’m developing the design document and storyboard.  Of course you need the consent of your academic to do this.  Some will be happy, some will not.  But if you can persuade them that it will be confidential and it will be destroyed after you've finished with it you should be fine.

2.  The big picture.  If you are using big sheets of paper or whiteboards (this is crucial if you choose these!) to record your academics content during a content meeting photograph everything at the end.  Why?  Well, when you get back to your desk you don’t want to be attempting to shuffle A1 sized sheets of paper around.  Photograph them and upload them to some sort of cloud storage.  I prefer Evernote for this because I can add additional notes to each of the photographs and easily keep track of the development of the content across a range of devices.  And, if you need to, it’s easy to share the content.