Nice Blog on eLearning Course Design

Although I'm generally ambivalent about the whole idea of eLearning 2.0 Tony Karrer has quite a few practical tips on eLearning design regardless of the version of your eLearning.

I found the breakdown of specific types of users (and the implication that you must design activities for each) quite helpful

Spectator / Joiner / Creator Levels of Participation

One of the best decisions we made early in the design of the course was to define different levels of participation in the course. Here's how we defined it:

Each week we will share new activities that will allow you to explore each of these tools. We recognize that there will be differences in interest, experience and time available for exploration, so these activities will be designed to give you meaningful experiences at different levels:

* The Spectator--These will be exercises or activities that should take approximately 15 minutes to complete. The Spectator level is for people who want just a quick exploration of the tools and minimal interaction.

* The Joiner/Collector--For those who want to delve more deeply into a particular Web 2.0 tool, the Joiner/Collector level will consist of activities that take approximately 30 minutes to complete.

* The Creator--These activities are for people who want to really spend some time exploring and trying out a particular tool or set of tools. The activities will take approximately 75 minutes to complete and will allow you to immerse yourself in the Web 2. 0 experience.

Of course I think this breakdown works if you delete all the references to web 2.0.

And I think these different styles of learning/levels of engagement actually apply to the [Instructor Led] classroom as well.