Development Model

A web-based course development team consists of the following functional roles. One individual can perform more than one role.

• project leader
• instructional designer
• subject matter expert (SME)
• content reviewer
• programmer
• HTML coder
• editor

Peer Review

Courses developed in partnership arrangements with school divisions have peer review within the development process. Each course has a development team consisting of the following:

• subject matter expert - teacher
• content reviewer - teacher (usually from same school division as the writer)
• project leader - Manitoba Education
• curriculum consultant - Manitoba Education

The development cycle consists of writing and review punctuated with review by project leader and curriculum consultant. The review process is formative.

Writing Process

Producing WBC modules can be separated into two major stages, lesson treatment and storyboarding.

• Lesson Treatment
  • is developed by the SME
  • follows a template which contains all lesson components
  • is a detailed description or narrative of the lesson contents, including information, questions, and student actions
  • provides a complete "picture" of the lesson

A review at this stage ensures that all of the necessary components, details, and conventions have been included prior to "converting" the lesson content to the user screens (WebCT pages) as specified in the storyboard.

• Storyboarding
  • uses a template
  • becomes the "script" that programmers follow in creating the pages
  • provides details of what each user screen will look like, including links to other screens and/or links to external resources

Together, the lesson treatments and storyboards are tools that allow systematic planning and creation of lessons, and provide a complete record of the course development. These tools can also help ensure consistency between lessons, especially if different writers are working on the various modules.

Lesson treatments and storyboards are also important in planning and managing workflow. It is not necessary to write a whole lesson before other members of the team (including programmers) can have input or provide feedback. After the SME treatment of the first lesson, it can be further developed by the instructional designer and/or sent forward for storyboarding. Meanwhile, the second lesson treatment can be done, and so on.

After content has been entered into WebCT, it is reviewed again and edited.