Source: Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Volume 33, Issue 1, 2012, p. 73-84
By adopting a scenario-based approach, teacher educators and others designing online environments can help prepare students for the types of challenges they will face in communities and classrooms after graduation. Solving complex problems inherent in a scenario-based approach affords students the opportunity to tackle ill-formed problems, integrate multiple perspectives, and use higher order thinking. These outcomes were among the goals of a redesign of online courses in an early childhood education degree program.
After presenting an overview of scenario-based instruction and the principles guiding the redesign, the authors describe how a scenario-based approach can be applied to an online graduate course and outline a course development process for other instructors.