Designing a course, minor or even an entire program is challenging: there are often good ideas, but also many challenges. For example, how do you ensure alignment with learning objectives and curricula, sufficient challenge for students, interactivity and more?

In short, where is the best place to start when designing or redesigning education? The educational design cycle can help you with this. This cycle consists of four steps that are based on the ADDIE-model (external link: albany.edu), as well as teachers’, trainers’ and educators’ own experiences. It is an iterative model involving continuous evaluation. For each step, key points of interest are described.