Week 10: Using the Framework - Five Stages

Falmouth University. Week 10: Using the Framework - Five Stages (2025) [Online] available at: https://learn.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/1334/pages/week-10-using-the-framework-five-stages?module_item_id=85572 (accessed 28.07.25)

Stage 1: Consider the scope

Stage 1 is the first stage of your learning design process. During this stage, you consider the potential scope of the learning intervention at course/programme/module level. It is also good to discuss this with other colleagues - to make sure you take account of a range of important things that might need to be considered. 

Things to think about here include:  

• What is the scope of the programme you are going to design?  

• What is the context for this programme of study? 

• Is it a module? A whole degree course? A weekly unit of learning? How will it fit into the rest of the course? 

• How many academic credits will this programme be worth? 

• Who are the learners? 

• What do you want them to achieve, by the end of the programme of study? 

• How capable are they likely to be, with digital learning and tools? 

• Who might be other users of the programme, besides your learners? What could be their needs? 

• What other technical or user capability issues might need to be considered? 

Stage 2: Formulate Learning Outcomes 

Stage 2 asks you to formulate the specific learning outcomes for the programme of study you are designing.  Clarifying specifically what you want your learners to be able to do, using appropriate active verbs, by the end of the programme of study.  

In Stage 1 you gave some early consideration to what these learning outcomes might be, along with the rest of your consideration of the scope of the programme of study. But here in Stage 2, you formulate these learning outcomes more specifically.  

On this PGCHE course, in both modules, you have already been heavily focusing on the design and application of learning outcomes in curriculum design. So, when you use this Falmouth Online Framework, applying this framework to your own practice, we would expect you as practitioners, to draw on all the previous depth of critical understanding you have gained about this and of different skills taxonomies (e.g. different versions of Bloom’s taxonomy, Biggs’ SOLO Taxonomy, etc) to formulate appropriate learning outcomes for your learners, in this Stage 2.   

Remember too what you have learned from the PGCHE about Biggs’ concept of Constructive Alignment. So, how the rest of the course – learning activities, assessment tasks, should all be aligned to the learning outcomes you choose, and support your learners to achieve them. Another reason for why it is so important to make sure the learning outcomes are appropriate and clearly specified, as best you can, at this Stage 2. To help you with designing those parts of the programme, at later stages, so you can make sure all are constructively aligned. 

Stage 3: Generate learning activities and match to Learning Types 

Stage 3 encourages you to start generating ideas for learning activities. Learning activities for your learners to do, to help them achieve the learning outcomes you want them to achieve, by the end of this programme of study.  

Remember Laurillard’s Learning Types, from earlier in this week – Acquisition, Enquiry or Investigation, Collaboration, Discussion, Practice, Production?  

Stage 3 also asks you to think about these in relation to the learning activities you are generating for your programme of study. So you can make sure that the learning activities you choose will help your learners to learn in ways most appropriate for their different learning needs, with the right proportion and range of different Learning Types, for students in your discipline and professional practice context. 

Stage 3 also encourages you to start thinking about your learning activities and Learning Types in relation to types of assessments, both formative and summative - through which you can assess how well your students are achieving the learning outcomes, and through which you can support their achievement of them. How could you best assess the learning that your students are achieving in your different types of learning activities? Would formative or summative be best, and when and how? Which of your learning activities could also be the most appropriate assessment tasks for your students? 

Learning cards link

EDU721 - Week 10 - Learning Types Cards.docx

Download DOCX • 319KB

Other questions to consider here are: 

• Would the learning activity work for individual or group work, or both? Which would be more appropriate? When, why and how? 

• Can the activity be done via a Virtual Learning Environment – Canvas, Moodle, etc? How? 

• Does the learning activity need access to an external platform or online tool, e.g. YouTube, Panopto, Padlet, etc? 

• Have you helped learners to achieve similar learning outcomes before on a course? What kinds of activities did you choose for your students to do, to achieve the learning outcomes? What have you seen other educators get their students to do? What worked and why and how? Could these activities be adapted for an online environment? How? 

Stage 4: Allocate learning activities to The Five Steps 

Table for activities allocation to The Five Steps, with PGCHE example 

Week 1

Learning outcome(s)

·       Build and consolidate your knowledge of a range of possible tools that could be available to you to support student learning activities, for a fully online course  ·       Critically evaluate the potential value of different tools for supporting students to do different online learning activities, to achieve a range of different learning outcomes  ·       Make critically informed choices about what and how technology should be used in online curriculum, especially in relation to your own teaching contexts  ·       Critically reflect on what and how you have learned this week, identifying potential implications for you and your colleagues’ current and future practice of developing flexible learning environments, in your local teaching contexts

Step	Component	Type of activity	Description of activity	Learning Type	Time (mins)
1	Spark	·       Forum	·       Generate list of 5 online tools you know  ·       Share list  ·       Comment & discuss	·       Discuss  ·       Produce  ·       Reflect	30
2	Knowledge acquisition	·       Video ·       Reading	·       Watch COFA video & review COFA docs  ·       Review Littlejohn’s success factors and barriers  ·       Read about online learning theory  ·       Reflect on question prompts	·       Enquire  ·       Reflect	60
3	Task activity	·       Reading  ·       Reflect and produce ·       Evaluation  ·       Share and discuss	·       Find an online tool. Research it. Explore and use it. Evaluate it.  ·       Produce and share your evaluation.   ·       Share, review and discuss colleagues’ tool evaluations.	·       Enquire  ·       Practice  ·       Produce  ·       Collaborate  ·       Reflect  ·       Discuss	150
4	Reflection	·       Guided critical reflection	·       Prompts for CRJ	·       Reflect	20
5	Consolidation	·       Forum  ·       Webinar   ·       Tutor summary post  ·       Sharing group created  product	·       Webinar (optional)  ·       Review tutor group feedback summary  ·       Download group created list of online tools for future	·       Collaborate  ·       Discuss  ·       Reflect	(60) 10

Stage 5: Evaluate the learning design 

Stage 5 invites you to evaluate this - to see if you have got the balance right, the workload for students and for academic credit load, etc. Then, if necessary, you can make appropriate adjustments. 

proportions derived from a 70:20:10 model for high performance development proposed by Jennings (2013). In this model it is proposed that the majority of learning and development comes from:  

• Learn and develop through experience (70%)  

• Learn and develop through others (20%) 

• Learn and develop through structured courses and programmes (10%)

When mapped against Laurillard’s Learning Types, this can look like this 

• Learn and develop through experience (Enquiry, Practice, Production – 70%) 

• Learn and develop through others (Discussion, Collaboration – 20%) 

• Learn and develop through structured courses and programmes (Acquisition – 10%) 

When combined it may look like this:

So, the idea with using these two tables, is to review the time you have allocated for your students, to do the different learning activities, through different Learning Types, that you have allocated to The Five Steps framework in Stage 4.  You write down your estimations of time, including their percentages. Then analyse the distribution of the learning to make sure there is a good balance in the types of learning your students are doing. 

Other things to consider could be:  

• Are the learning activities aligned with the stated learning outcomes and helping the students to achieve them? 

• How well are the learning activities in the design, integrated together and interdependent, in a clear narrative? So that, for example, your students need to engage with acquiring the knowledge you share with them, in order to be able to do subsequent activities? 

• How well are the learning activities integrated with other parts of the wider programme of study, for example, with the assessments, the rest of the learning weeks, the whole course, etc? 

• Is the workload for the students appropriate, in terms of expectations of study hours per week and module, academic credits, what else they may be doing at the same time, etc?