Critics Checklist
Now is the opportunity for you to review each other’s designs.
Use the questions on the checklist to prompt your questioning of the activity
designer(s).
A suggested structure for your conversations with designers….
Remember that this process is planned as a useful experience for the course
designer(s). Try to use your questioning to draw out of them advantages and
potential difficulties of their plan which might not have occurred to them.
Give them time to answer questions fully, to think about new solutions, and
to take notes of their emerging ideas if they want to.
1. Student experience: Ask how a typical student might experience
their progress through the learning activity, from start to finish.
2. Activity design: Find out which aspects of this activity design are
particularly novel and interesting (give each other a chance to
showcase the work before you start being too critical!)
3. Student support: Clarify how students will be supported in their
learning. What aspects of the teaching, learning and assessment
process might be new to them? How has support for this built into the
activity? If you see holes in the student support issues, point them
out.
4. Assessment and feedback – What opportunities are there for
feedback to students on their progress before the summative
assessment? How will the activity be integrated into the assessment
of the course?
5. Outcome Audit: Ask the designer(s) to take one learning outcome
and follow through how students will become familiar with it and its
related content, have opportunities to practice their developing
skills, gain feedback on their learning, and finally, demonstrate their
learning related to that outcome in final assessment.
6. Diversity. How have issues of accessibility been accommodated
within the design and preparation of the materials? How does the
design proactively accommodate diversity in the student body?
7. Staffing: Who will teach/tutor on the activity? What additional
skills/facilities might the staff need? What would make teaching on
this activity intolerable to you?
8. Technology: How much of the technology incorporated in the plan is
already available and accessible to you? What additional
technological requirements does this activity have?