Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime

5.1. PICK FROM COMMON LESSON STRUCTURES

A lesson is a collection of activities and presentations that accomplish one of the sub-goals of the course. Each lesson is larger than an individual page and smaller than the whole course. Learners progress through a lesson along paths determined by the designer or choices by the learner. In many ways, a lesson is a miniature course requiring its own objectives, introductions, assessments, and feedback.

Over the years, designers of distance learning, CBT, and WBT courses have evolved several common lesson structures. These have the advantage of much experimentation and refinement. WBT developers have also begun to experiment with new structures that may deliver training more effectively and efficiently.

Before you start to design your own lesson structures, take a few minutes to consider some of the models presented below. These models are not meant to be solutions to your problems. Use them as a starting point for your own solutions.

5.1.1. Classic tutorials

The classic tutorial, and its many variants, serves as the model for most current WBT lessons. It is a WBT implementation of the way teachers have taught for 50,000 years.

5.1.1.1. Architecture of classic tutorials

In the classic tutorial, the learners start with an introduction to the lesson and then proceed through a series of pages teaching progressively more advanced skills ...