Designing Effective Curricula with an Interactive Collaborative Curriculum Design Tool (CCDT)

ABSTRACT

Guided by the principles of the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) instructional design (ID) model, this creative instructional product presents a learning/teaching approach that is fundamentally constructivist. For the purposes of designing effective instruction in an academic preparation course, a Collaborative Curriculum Design Tool (CCDT) was chosen as the major educational technology tool. The target audience includes adult English as a second language (ESL) students preparing for undergraduate and/or graduate schools in the U.S. Based on this specific learner group in this academic preparation course, the primary learning objective of this design is to help students improve their academic English skills in various domains. Technological tools selected to achieve this learning goal consist of those that promote the development of each competency in the language. There are numerous software programs employed to support students’ vocabulary, reading, and writing skills development, in addition to assisting with their improvement in listening and speaing fluency.