Instructional design concepts
Before opening Studio, it’s worth spending a few minutes on instructional design — the shape of the course matters more than the polish. For Liverpool Dental CPD this also intersects with GDC development outcomes and how you plan to justify CPD hours.
ENDO101’s outline in Studio. Sections expand into subsections, which expand into units. The unit Welcome Message is published (live) with discussions enabled.
The Learning Hub course hierarchy
Every course in Studio follows the same nested structure:
| Level | Studio name | What it usually represents | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top | Section | A module or week | ”Module 1 — Endodontic diagnosis” |
| Middle | Subsection | A topic or session | ”Pulpal vs periapical disease” |
| Bottom | Unit | A single page of content | ”Case overview” |
| Inside a unit | Component | Text, video, problem, or XBlock | A 4-min video + 3 MCQs |
Subsections are the unit of grading — when you set a graded assessment, you’re grading at the subsection level, not per problem.
Aligning to CPD hours and GDC outcomes
For each course, decide up front:
- Total CPD hours — recorded under Settings → Schedule & Details. Be honest about realistic study time, not the absolute minimum.
- GDC development outcomes addressed (A, B, C, D) — list these in the course overview text so learners can match them to their PDP.
- Assessment that justifies the hours — at minimum one end-of-module assessment per CPD hour claimed is a defensible baseline.
Bloom-aligned activities
Use the right component type for the cognitive level:
- Remember / understand → text + single-select / dropdown / multi-select MCQs.
- Apply / analyse → image-hotspot, drag-drop-matching, sort-into-bins XBlocks (case-based reasoning).
- Evaluate / create → open-response assessments with a rubric, or image-annotation tasks.
The Liverpool Dental deployment ships 11 custom XBlocks for case-based learning — see The problem component for the list.
A 5-minute planning checklist
- One sentence: who is this course for? (e.g. “GDPs three years post-qualification revisiting endodontic case selection”)
- 3–5 learning outcomes, each starting with an active verb.
- Total CPD hours and GDC outcomes decided.
- Section outline sketched on paper before you open Studio.
- One assessment item planned per learning outcome.