Activity-Based Instructional Design for online teaching / <i>Diseño Instruccional Basado en Actividades para la enseñanza en línea</i>

The goal of this paper is to describe the Activity-Based Instructional Design (ABID) model for the online course designer, who may not have expertise in learning theory. ABID provides the course designer and instructor in tertiary education with a naturally modular, student-centred and theory-informed template which reconceptualizes the online course as a series of interconnected and interrelated activities that provides the learner with the set of psychological tools needed to achieve the learning objectives of the course. In this Vygotskian framework, two crucial ideas emerge: the learning activity and not the software that is the unit of analysis; and the learning outcome of each activity provides the psychological tools used by a learner in subsequent activities. We employ Engeström’s cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for the design of the online course. To illustrate this design process, we apply the ABID model to the design of an online introductory statistics course. Because ABID is based on a well-developed learning theory, it enables us to make clear proscriptions to achieve better student learning.