Meet Amanda Evans

Educational Designer, University of Sydney

What are your areas of eLearning expertise?

I specialise in constructive alignment and learning design. Constructive alignment is a pedagogical approach that is critical to the development of eLearning courses because it ensures that content (lectures or teaching content), formative learning activities and summative assessment tasks are directly linked to the intended learning outcomes. Learning design, on the other hand, is an educational process that applies a pedagogical model to develop learning outcomes and learning activities that are supported by the use of appropriate tools and resources. By specialising in these skills, I have been able to help subject matter experts (SMEs) develop measurable assessments and meaningful learning experiences.

How have you made use of your skills in the APCOVE project?

To ensure that all of the competencies had a seamless experience, I developed an eLearning style guide to aid in the module development phase. The guide guaranteed that all of the competencies had a consistent look and feel, as I only built two out of the six competencies. In the style guide, I identified the best learning design practices and standards for all of the modules, which also ensured that APCOVE branding was maintained. This guide was sent to the other eLearning companies to use when they developed their modules.

To further ensure consistency across all 36 modules, I met with SMEs and provided educational design advice on how to apply constructive alignment while they were in the content development phase and edited content and videos while in the module development phase.

I also liaised with other educational designers to provide learning design advice on content placement and gave tips on how to include interactive elements that provided formative and summative feedback to the learners.

What have you most enjoyed about the role with the APCOVE project?  

I have really enjoyed taking the content for competencies C (Surveillance and Data Analysis) and F (Leadership and Communication) and developing modules that provided interactive and quality learning experiences. The SMEs on this project allowed me to be creative with my learning design and also pushed me to develop modules that were engaging. I learned a lot from the veterinarians and animal professionals, and I am grateful to have been a part of this project.