BOOK REVIEW: Conquering the Content: A Blueprint for Online Course Design and Development (2nd ed.), by Robin M. Smith

The author of this book, Robin M. Smith, is the director of elearning at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She designed this book to give instructors the tools necessary to guide the design and development of quality online courses. The course is organized into chapters, or lessons, that guide the instructor through a series of design steps used toward creating an online course. The author states that the book is both subject and technology independent, regardless of the delivery tool and content topic. The principles found in this book will apply to the creation of high-quality online courses.The book is divided into lessons that cover the following topics, in order: (1) Begin Here, an overview of key concepts, (2) Content Map, the course plan, (3) Learning Guide, the outcomes, activities and assessments for each topic from the content map, (4) Prioritizing, or deciding on the layers of the course to begin developing, and what improvements can wait for a later date, (5) Content, using learning theories and chunking of content to bridge learning, (6) Continuous Improvement, approaches to identifying improvements that can alleviate learning challenges.The book has a lot of great features, including: (a) A simple-to-follow design plan that provides a less complex means of creating a high-quality online course than some of the more complicated instructional design processes in existence, such as ADDIE. (b) The author works with instructors on developing an online course in layers and stages, starting with a simple plan and adding more complex improvements over time to improve the overall robustness of the course. This is a feature that will appeal greatly to very busy instructors. (c) The book advocates for planning for the online environment from the beginning, which is important if the course design will appropriately support students in that delivery format. Too often in elearning support we see a faceto-face course converted directly to the online environment without redesigning it to fit that new delivery format. This does not serve the students well and this book aims to avoid the associated challenges from doing that. (d) The book supports pedagogically driven technology choices rather than using technology just for the sake of using technology. Technology choices should support student learning, not detract from it. This book encourages making smart technology choices that make sense.The book also had a few areas that could be adjusted to suit a more focused design approach, such as: (a) The book starts with the content map. In one example the book has the instructor use the chapter titles to create topics in the course map, rather than beginning the design process with an evaluation of the learning goals and competencies that students ought to have as a consequence of successful completion of the course. Analyzing the learning goals and prioritizing the content based on the learning goals should come first, and the content map should come afterward and be planned around that. There should be nothing in a course that does not directly map back to the learning goals and outcomes. (b) The instructor evaluates some key design criteria after they have already created the entire course map. For example, deciding how to chunk content should be done during the course mapping stage, not later. Having an analysis of learning goals and review of important design considerations at the start of the process rather than later in the process would improve the approach applied in this book.This book reviewer prefers online course design that starts with the goals in mind; after all, if we cannot clearly identify outcomes for students, it will be difficult to establish the best means for designing content that can support student success. Therefore, the reviewer advocates for backwards design over other approaches to designing online courses. However, with this bias noted, there are a number of very good concepts in this book, and it does help guide the instructor through a design process in manageable steps that can fit into their busy work schedules. The book helps the instructor to understand why various criteria and design considerations matter in the process, even if they learn about them later in the approach then perhaps they ought to. Overall this book seems best suited to the K–12 learning environment where content is centered on rigid core curriculum requirements and instructors may have less flexibility in what topics can be covered. In such environments starting with the textbook and making a course map based on the chapter titles might better suit the students who need to pass standardized tests. Overall this book is a good resource of ideas and approaches that an instructional designer can use in supporting faculty through the online course development process.