The Changing Field of Curriculum Development and the Role of Outside Vendors
The curriculum in a virtual setting has to be accessible to a wide variety of students, which means having less text, more multimedia, and more interactivity. Examples of this include virtual labs, simulations, podcasts, and other interactive media. In developing curricula to be used with virtual instruction, solid and tested learning theories are used as well as instructional design principles.
A curriculum development model is a plan or flowchart that provides a structure for organizing related instructional activities into a unified series of events. In online learning, it is necessary to identify key pedagogical concepts and instructional models to ensure consistency and quality and serve as a road map for online curriculum designers (who are likely to have a variety of educational backgrounds).
The following explores several theories of instruction (with which you may already be familiar through your experience in education) and examines how they apply to online curricula.
Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction
Gagne’s nine events of instruction are:
- Gaining Attention (Reception)
- Informing Learners of the Objective (Expectation)
- Stimulating Recall of Prior Learning (Retrieval)
- Presenting the Stimulus (Selective Perception)
- Providing Learning Guidance (Semantic Encoding)
- Eliciting Performance (Responding)
- Providing Feedback (Reinforcement)
- Assessing Performance (Retrieval)
- Enhancing Retention and Transfer (Generalization)
By following this model as they develop their online curricula, instructors can consistently create engaging experiential instruction.
Keller’s Motivational ARCS Model
Keller’s Motivational ARCS model includes:
- Attention
- Relevance
- Confidence
- Satisfaction
Attention refers to establishing and maintaining curiosity and arousing the learner. Relevance refers to linking the learning situation to the needs and motives of the learner. Confidence refers to learners attributing positive learning experiences to their individual behavior. Finally, satisfaction refers to developing the desire to continue the pursuit of similar goals. Using these concepts, instructional designers can create motivating instructional activities for use in online learning.
Bloom’s Hierarchy
Harold Bloom’s hierarchy of thinking skills classifies instructional tasks into a series of categories associated with increasing degrees of critical thinking:
- Rote levels of knowledge and comprehension
- Application
- Analysis
- Synthesis
- Evaluation
By using this basic conceptual framework in the educator’s toolbox, the developer can create activities that tap into different levels of the cognitive domain.
Understanding by Design
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design (UBD) method focuses on backward design or framing the curriculum with essential questions and enduring understanding. Online instructors can design instructional activities and interactive discussion questions with this theory in mind.
In addition to theories of instruction, online curricula also encompass instructional design methods and practices. Four basic instructional design principles by Kemmis, Atkin, and Wright as summarized by Cavanaugh and Blomeyer (2007) are frequency of interaction, the complexity of interaction, feedback content, and quality, and balancing comprehension and significance. Instructional designers use technology skills and solid teaching practices to create an online curriculum that meets a variety of student needs.
Role of Outside Vendors in the Virtual School Setting
The information in the previous section can be used as evidence supporting the notion that there is a greater need for outside vendors in virtual school settings than in traditional schools. In the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom, outside vendors are relied upon for textbooks and, to a certain extent, additional classroom materials. In a virtual setting, the reliance on outside vendors is greater, especially in full-time K-12 programs. Instructors simply cannot be expected to design and create all the technology they need for interactive, engaging, and motivating content that is appropriate for the age and level of their students. Teachers know learning theories and best practices, but just because they know what good online instruction may look like does not mean they have the technical expertise (and time) to create the applications they need.
In addition to vendors that provide learning management systems and synchronous meeting platforms, there are those that provide online curricula including online textbooks, interactive videos, tutorials, assessments, and more. Also, online educators can find numerous free and open-source materials online—with the major caveat that these materials may not (1) be consistently available, (2) include technical support, or (3) be free from embedded advertising. Some providers of online education have experts create their own material and/or enter into purchase agreements with other vendors to use their content.
The table below lists several of the vendors in the online education world and what they provide:
| Vendor Name and Link | Description |
|---|---|
| Study Island | Interactive material that prepares students for state tests nationwide, by state and grade |
| Savvas Learning Company | Digital learning content and tools in many content areas |
| OdysseyWare | Multimedia-rich curriculum for grades 3-12. |
| Brain Pop | Engaging Instructional videos in all content areas K-12 that can be embedded into courses |
| Discovery Education | Digital curriculum resources for K-12 |
| Pearson PreK-12 Courseware | Core, elective, foundations, advanced courses available for purchase to use with district teachers or can be contracted to come with teaching services |
| Lincoln Learning Solutions | Elementary through high school course offerings including electives. |
| Apex Learning | Courses for middle school and high school |
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