Stage 2 of 10 · Design and release
Specify
What exactly must a learner be able to do?
- Purpose
- Take in or author the learning standard.
- Defining artefact
- A structured standard
- Exit gate
- Standard complete and active
- Failure it prevents
- Designing against an outdated or misread standard
Specify turns the learning standard into structured data rather than a document. Decompose it into outcomes, required knowledge, required skills, evidence requirements, assessment conditions and grading levels. Every later stage traces to these parts.
The same structure can represent a regulated vocational unit, a university subject, or a course authored by an independent expert. Where no external standard exists, this is the stage where you author one.
What happens
- Take in the current version of the standard, or author it, and record which version you are designing against.
- Break it into outcome descriptors: specific, observable expectations that are the smallest unit of traceability.
At the gate, ask
- Is this the current, active version of the standard?
- Could two designers read a descriptor and agree on what evidence would show it?
- Is anything in the standard we have not yet represented?