Running ABC LD online (in Excel)

There have been quite a few people asking about running ABC Learning Design online at the moment.

To get something together quickly using a tool most people are familiar with I put together this Online ABC LD in Excel, based on ideas shared on abc-ld.org. You work through the spreadsheet a tab at a time, starting in the left most tab (0), moving to each following tab to the right, until you reach the end, then returning back through each tab to the left untilĀ  you get to the last step 8, on the Actions tab.

The steps are as follows:

  1. Shape from Online ABC in ExcelTweet: write the title of your course & a short (280 character) description of the course, not including the title.
  2. Shape: estimate the hours students will spend on each type of learning.
  3. Blend: estimate how much will be completed by students online. The face to face element will be what’s remaining.
  4. Storyboard: Plan your course by outlining the week, activity title, choosing activities (defined in tab 0), entering learning time, identifying assessments, selecting learning outcomes.
    You can either use this excel sheet (in tab 4.Storyboard) or Learning Designer (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/learning-designer/) for this step and then export the Word file into the final tab for reference.
  5. Revisit Blend: How much did you actually plan to blend your course (online & f2f)?
  6. Revisit Shape: How much of each type of learning did you actually plan to have your students do?
  7. Revisit ILOs:”Did you plan activities for all your Intended Learning Outcomes? If not, go back to your storyboard and add any missing ILOs in last column.”
  8. Actions: Enter your actions in the Action list and assign who will work on them, whether you need help to complete them, what the priority is and when the work should be completed.

You are welcome to use and adapt this tool for your own purposes. Please just make sure you retain the license (you can add your name to the credits) and share it back to the ABC LD community.