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Session 2. Programme Architecture: Hours, Credits, Modules and Blended Delivery
Objective. Split a programme into learner hours, modules and a weekly calendar, choose face-to-face, school-based and remote work for each purpose, and test the plan against a teacher's real week.
Most programmes fail quietly on the calendar, not on the content: the sessions are good, but the week has no room for them. This lesson goes beyond the key ideas to two practical skills. First, how to design the school-based part so that it is small, specific and tied to the next session. Second, how to run a weekly load check that finds the heavy week before your teachers do.
Key ideas
Count all the learner's hours, not only the room hours
- Learner workload is everything a teacher must do to reach the outcomes: sessions in the room, practice with pupils, reading and preparing, and the work for assessment. Programmes that count only room hours hide most of the real load.
- Many systems express workload as credits. In the European ECTS convention 60 credits equal a full-time academic year, about 1,500 to 1,800 hours, so one credit is roughly 25 to 30 hours. Use your national rule if there is one; the principle is to count honestly.
- Our sample: 90 hours of learner work = 3 credits at 30 hours per credit. Split it into contact 30, school-based practice 30, guided self-study 15 and assessment work 15.
Modules and sequencing
- A module is a coherent block with its own outcomes, hours and assessment, usually 15 to 20 hours for in-service teachers. Five modules of 18 hours each make 90 hours and are easy to explain and to schedule.
- Order the modules by dependency: what must come first (for example, finding out how pupils read) and what builds on it. Plan a spiral, so that important competencies come back in a later module in a harder setting.
- Use a rhythm of session, school practice, session: a 3-hour session, one or two weeks of trying it with pupils, then a 3-hour session that begins with what happened in classrooms. Place breaks between modules, not inside them, and avoid test weeks and holidays such as Navruz.
Blended delivery: choose by purpose, not by fashion
- Use the room for what needs people together: demonstration, practice with feedback, and discussion. Use school-based work for trying things with real pupils. Use remote or printed work for reading, sharing plans and reminders.
- Reviews of effective professional development, such as the Learning Policy Institute work by Darling-Hammond and colleagues, point to modelling, coaching and support over a sustained period. Short one-off blocks cannot supply that, so the school-based part is not optional.
- Always write an offline fallback. If eight schools in a cluster have weak internet, the printed pack and a paper reply slip must work as well as the messenger group.
Entry, group size and the one-page programme descriptor
- Decide who may enter: years of experience, grades taught, and a letter from the head agreeing to release time and to allow one lesson visit. Entry rules protect teachers from joining a programme that does not fit them.
- Keep a cohort to about 20 to 25 so that every teacher can be seen teaching and heard. A bigger group needs more trainers or fewer observed lessons, and the plan must say which.
- Summarise the architecture on one page for teachers, heads and approvers: title, purpose, audience, entry, hours and credits, modules, how it is assessed, and the award.
Where the 90 hours go (illustrative)
Designing the school-based part
A good school task is small enough to fit into a normal week and specific enough that two teachers could compare results. 'Try questioning in your lessons' is too loose. 'In two lessons this week ask three questions that need a reason, and keep five pupil answers' can be done in a week, produces evidence and gives the next session something real to work on.
Name the person who will see the work. A partner teacher in the same school, the head or a trainer on a visit all count, but someone must look. Tasks that no one reads teach teachers that the school part is optional. Tell the heads in advance what you will ask of teachers and what you ask of them, such as protecting one period for a peer visit.
The weekly load check
Draw the term as a row of weeks and write under each week the contact hours, the school practice and the study you expect. Add them up. The average is a trap: a programme of 90 hours over 16 weeks averages about 5.6 hours a week, but if the portfolio falls in week 16 that week may need 11. Look for the maximum, not the mean, and compare it with what teachers told you they can give.
Then move weight, do not only cut it. Spread portfolio entries across modules, put the heavy session away from the end of a school quarter, and keep a free week after each module as a buffer for holidays and illness. Credits tell approvers how big the course is; only the calendar shows whether it can be done.
Examples from the classroom
The heavy week in Fergana
Scene. A methodist in Fergana plots a 90-hour programme over 16 weeks and finds the average is 5.6 hours. Under each week she writes the real tasks and discovers that weeks 8 and 16 each reach 10 hours because the portfolio and a test coincide with the end of the quarter. She moves the portfolio entries into three earlier weeks and the test into week 15, bringing every week under 7 hours.
Insight. Check the maximum week, not the average, and move weight rather than only cutting it.
A printed pack for villages
Scene. A cluster near Bukhara has eight schools with weak internet. The trainers print a 24-page pack for each module: six short readings, three task sheets and a reply slip. Teachers return the slips at the next Saturday session, and a messenger group is used only for reminders by those who can. The pack costs the centre about the price of printing and is checked once a week for missing pages.
Insight. A paper route that works as well as the online one keeps the whole cohort in the programme.
Small tasks that produce evidence
Scene. In Navruz week, a trainer in Samarkand sets a task of 20 minutes: choose one text from the Grade 3 textbook, write three questions of different levels and try one in class. Teachers bring the question card and one pupil answer. In the next session pairs compare cards for 15 minutes. The task is short enough to survive a holiday week and gives the trainer something real to respond to.
Insight. Short, specific tasks with a named reader are far more likely to be done than big vague ones.
Common pitfalls
- Counting only room hours and promising a '30-hour' course that really takes 90.
- Checking the average weekly load and missing a peak week at the end of the term.
- Setting school tasks that nobody reads, so teachers learn the school part is optional.
- Designing an online-only plan for a cluster where many schools have unreliable internet.
Fit 90 Hours into a Term
- Open the Activity Kit: the constraint card, the component table, five module cards with dependencies, a blank 16-week calendar and a card, 'A week in Dilnoza's life'. (5 min)
- Alone (10 min): split the 90 hours across contact, school practice, self-study and assessment work for each module. Keep the totals 30, 30, 15, 15.
- Pairs (20 min): order the five modules using the dependency notes and place the ten Saturday sessions and the school-practice windows on the 16-week calendar. Mark where the final portfolio, practical task and test happen.
- Trios (15 min): test the calendar against 'A week in Dilnoza's life'. Find the heaviest week, count its hours, and move something so that no week asks for more than 7 learner hours.
- Whole group (10 min): compare two calendars. Name the biggest risk in each (a holiday, a late module, a heavy final week) and how you would reduce it.
- Part B, blend (13 min): for six learning activities decide whether each is done in the room, in school, remotely or on paper, and write one reason. Add an offline fallback for any remote one.
- Alone (12 min): write your leadership task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which hours had you forgotten when you first thought about the programme, and who would have carried them?
- Where did your calendar bend to fit a real constraint, and was the bend acceptable for the outcomes?
- Which activity did you keep in the room even though it could be remote, and why?
Reflect
- How many hours a week do your teachers truly have for learning, and how do you know?
- What part of your last course was in the room only because that was the habit?
- Who would you ask to read your one-page descriptor and tell you what is unclear?
Try it tomorrow
- Write a weekly load row for your own term and circle the heaviest week.
- Ask a colleague which part of a recent course they did on paper and which online, and whether the split suited their week.
- Rewrite one 'try this' task as a 20-minute task with an output and a named reader.
Further reading and links
Count every learner hour, sequence modules by dependency with a session-practice-session rhythm, and choose where each activity happens by its purpose, with an offline fallback.