One of my favorite stories was the story of the Salton Sea. I started with deep history, going back to the tectonic movement of plates, to glacial times and included the Colorado River's formation and beyond. It is a truly compelling history when you analyze it. The Salton Sea's present state owes little to that deep history, but when you know that extra information, there's a sense of continuity that makes it possibly a little more interesting.
After working in the corporate world for a while, it has become clear to me that management professionals tell stories. They tell stories that need to be bought by peers, by reports, or by upper management (their bosses). The stories might be missing parts and they might be exaggerations. What these people are all doing is architecting. They are architecting their personal stories in a way that gets them what they want. With Ivy League educations, the stories end up being pretty articulate and we often are impressed. But they remain stories, at heart.
Course design and architecture are not a whole lot different, and fortunately, the constraints are far more limiting. Course objectives limit your scope, for example. Exam or certification objectives provide guidance for content development.
What might be a good way to really achieve course architecture though? In my experience it has been one of the following:
1. An outline
2. A design document
3. A list of random topics
4. A mind map (oooh, what's that?)
Of these, which really helps you write a story? Surprisingly, 3 and 4. Yet, the first two are more common in the corporate world, but the last two really focus on the creative nature of the human mind. I say that with no scientific citation, but it's probably true (I think that's a worthy lit search, but not at this hour).
Architecting a course using a mindmap is going to be my next post.
