Creating Courses that are Engaging, Inclusive, and Informed by Best Practices in Instructional Design

EVERFI Course Development

Designing Engaging and

Effective Course Content

OVERVIEW

EVERFI’s approach to course development and instructional design embraces practices that allow our teams to work collaboratively to design, develop and deliver engaging and effective online instructional experiences. We leverage principles and ideas from multiple theories and models of instructional design including ADDIE, Bloom’s Taxonomy and Rapid Prototyping.

As a result, EVERFI courses inspire and engage learners. Where relevant, our course content also meets federal and state compliance requirements.

For institutions of higher education, EVERFI offers twelve courses for students on topics including substance abuse prevention, sexual assault prevention, mental well-being, and diversity and inclusion. Nine studies on EVERFI’s higher education courses have been published in peer reviewed journals, demonstrating impact and efficacy.

This document provides a brief overview of EVERFI’s approach to course development and design.

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About EVERFI

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ABOUT EVERFI

EVERFI is the leading provider of enterprise technology powering prevention education, data analytics, and research for 1,500 higher education institutions. Serving more than 5 million learners annually, EVERFI helps its college and university partners create safer, healthier, and more inclusive campus communities. Through online prevention education and compliance training, policy and program guidance, professional development, data insights and performance benchmarking, EVERFI delivers solutions that make colleges and universities great places to live, learn, and work.

OUR EXPERTISE

Our Impact and Education team has over 80 years

of higher education experience with expertise in public health, sexual violence and substance abuse prevention, wellness and mental health, and diversity and inclusion. Our team’s subject matter expertise also includes research, positive youth development psychology, data analytics, law, (including federal and state compliance),

student affairs, and curriculum design. We are

committed to helping higher education administrators both understand and train their student population, and direct resources to achieve breakthrough impact and best-in-class outcomes.

OUR COURSES

EVERFI offers over 35 courses for colleges and

universities, including 12 student courses on the topics of sexual assault prevention, alcohol and other drug misuse, diversity and inclusion and mental well-being.

We combine academic and industry research,

insights from leading experts and practitioners, best-practices in online learning pedagogy, and feedback from our partners to develop courses that educate and empower. We prepare learners to make informed, thoughtful decisions about their own behavior and to support their friends and peers. Nine independent studies, published in leading professional journals, demonstrate the efficacy of EVERFI’s alcohol misuse and sexual assault prevention programs.

Instructional Design Frameworks

EVERFI courses are created by a team of instruction designers, curriculum designers subject matter experts, legal experts and user experience design experts. These individuals bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to our development process. In addition, EVERFI courses draw on the following frameworks to inform instructional design and learning development objectives.

ADDIE

ADDIE is an instructional design framework originally developed for the U.S. Army by the Centre for Educational Technology at Florida State University in the 1970s. Its name is an acronym for the five phases it defines for building training and courses:

Analysis - clarifies the instructional problems and objectives including identifying who are the learners, what are their characteristics, what is the desired new behavior?

Design - identifies the learning objectives, assessment instruments, exercises, content, subject

matter analysis, lesson planning, and media selection

Development - the team works to assemble content assets described in the design phase, and

make revisions according to feedback

Implementation - preparation for both facilitators and learners

Evaluation - a range of assessment procedures used to modify activities to improve outcomes

(data, surveys, assessments, feedback, etc.)

BLOOM’S TAXONOMY

Bloom's Taxonomy includes a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The three lists cover the learning objectives in cognitive, affective and sensory domains. The cognitive domain list has been frequently used to structure curriculum learning objectives, assessments and activities. The cognitive domain taxonomy was originally published in 1956, and was revised in 2001.

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Instructional Design Frameworks (continued)

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BLOOM’S TAXONOMY COGNITIVE DOMAIN LIST

1. Remember - Recalling facts, terms, and basic concepts, without necessarily understanding what they mean. Examples: What does BAC stand for? What is the legal drinking age in your state? Is using prescription marijuana permitted on campus?

2. Understand - Demonstrating an understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating the main ideas. Examples: Illustrate the differences between two objects or ideas (such as direct or indirect approach to intervening), summarizing the plot of a scenario that was presented in the course.

3. Apply - Using acquired knowledge. Solving problems in new situations by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules. For example, using a formula to solve a problem, using strategies to decline an offer of an alcoholic beverage, planning ahead to stay safe when you’ll be drinking, and engaging in getting affirmative, sober consent prior to engaging in sexual activity.

4. Analyze - Involves examining and breaking information into component parts, determining how the parts relate to one another, identifying motives or causes, making inferences, and finding evidence to support generalizations. Examples include describing ways you can ensure that alcohol doesn’t negatively impact your goals and plans while at college. List how you can support someone you care about who has shared their experience with trauma with you.

5. Evaluate - Involves presenting and defending opinions by making judgments about information, validity of ideas, or the quality of work based on a set of criteria. Examples include making a judgment regarding an ethical dilemma, evaluating a new or existing technology designed to help keep students safe on campus, interpreting the significance and impact of a school’s policies and procedures regarding alcohol and other drugs (such as a school’s “Good Samaritan Policy”).

6. Create - involves designing a new solution to an existing problem. Examples include developing and implementing a new strategy or plan to ensure that all students feel supported, included and accepted at a school, or designing a new technology students can leverage to learn about non-alcoholic events on campus and in the local community.

Content Development

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EVERFI’s college and university courses are designed and developed to support the achievement of specific behavioral outcomes.

Each course’s target behavioral outcomes is supported by a set of learning objectives. The learning objectives are linked to individual-level factors that influence behavior, which can be grouped into eight categories that are derived from three seminal behavior change theories: the Health Belief Model, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and Social Cognitive Theory.

1. Knowledge: Especially important points of knowledge include the seriousness of the topic and related problems, including a focus on academic, economic, health, legal, and social consequences; personal risk factors; the existence of behavioral choices; and other key facts (e.g., factors that affect blood alcohol level, warning signs of alcohol poisoning/overdose).

2. Attitudes & Beliefs: Positive or negative reactions and feelings about a new behavior are grounded in a set of supportive or non-supportive beliefs (e.g., “Playing drinking games is dangerous,” “The minimum legal drinking age is unfair”).

3. Perceived Outcomes: In general, people will be more likely to engage in new behaviors that provide more benefits than costs. Potential benefits are more motivating when they are highly valued and likelier to occur.

4. Personal Norms: People are more likely to engage in new behaviors that are consistent with their personal values or with their self-image.

5. Social Norms: People are greatly influenced by the expectations of other persons or groups who approve or disapprove of a particular behavior. These perceived expectations, in turn, are informed by observations of what other people say or do in particular circumstances. Perceptions of social norms are highly prone to error.

6. Behavioral Skills: People are more successful in changing their behavior if they have self-assessment and self-management skills. Certain behaviors may require more specific skills, such as knowing how to intervene when another student may need support.

7. Perceived Behavioral Control: People are more likely to engage in behaviors when they believe they are capable of doing so at particular times and places, and when they can call upon learned strategies to overcome possible barriers.

8. Cues to Action: Internal or external cues can serve as reminders to engage in a new behavior. This is especially important when trying to change habits.

Accessibility & Inclusion

Accessibility

We recognize accessibility and inclusivity are high priorities for our partners and our learners. As part of our commitment to delivering great educational and training experiences, we are dedicated to building digitally inclusive programs for all.

EVERFI solutions are designed to be accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act (Titles II & III), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the accessibility standards set forth by the W3Cs Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. In our desire to improve internationalization of our solutions we will strive to comply with the updates to the European Accessibility Standard EN 301 549 “Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services” in support of the EU Web Accessibility Directive. Our commitment to digital inclusion--the ability of all individuals to access and use information so that they are empowered to participate in and benefit from today’s growing information society-- is key to our ability to create positive, lasting change in our communities by making digital education and training accessible to all.

Inclusion

At EVERFI, we are conscious of and sensitive to the diversity of our learners. We seek to develop course content that is engaging and is inclusive of learners from all backgrounds and identities by:

• Adopting a learner-centric approach to course development in which we strive to meet learners where they are with no preconceived notions about their journey

• Avoid stereotypes via language and assumptions • Create a carefully curated image and video library that is

intentionally inclusive and equitable for all learners • Select fictional and non-fictional scenarios that show a variety

of gender dynamics, and avoid stereotypes

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