CAFE: Content ideas

1. Introduction

The first element in the University of London's CAFE model is 'Content'. Content is the first step in the learning sequence, where we engage, present and explain to students. 

We will split this section into two different purposes: engaging students and then presenting and explaining information to them. 

Engaging students is about gaining their attention and stimulating their recall of prior learning. We'll show you some examples of how to do this on the next page.

Presenting and explaining information is the stage of the process that involves the more 'traditional' form of instruction where the teacher imparts information to the learner. Though this is the first stage of the learning sequence, it is not sufficient on its own to ensure that a deep and meaningful learning experience has taken place.  

This step involves identifying and developing suitable teaching content such as written material, videos or audio recordings. 

2. Engage

The purpose of this part of 'Content' is to engage students in the topic and awaken their prior knowledge. Here are some examples of how to do this. 

3. Present and explain

There are three main ways that we present and explain information to students: Readings, Lectures (including video and audio) and through third-party videos. The following pages include information on how to pick out your readings and design your lectures. 

At the end of the section, you'll find examples of how to use these resources well. 

4. Readings

Introduction

Readings can either be the main source of information for a lesson or they can provide background or context. 

When writing your MDP, it is essential that you give full references (or URLs where appropriate) for the readings that you want to include. This includes the specific chapter or section details if you want students to read only an extract of a textbook or journal article. 

Readings can include (but are not limited to):

• sections from textbooks
• journal articles
• blog posts
• company websites. 

Note: We are unable to use articles from Harvard Business Review as readings because of restrictions put in place by the publisher. 

Availability of readings

Your librarian from our Online Library will check the availability of the readings that you suggest in your MDP. The Library contains over 100 million digital items, including ebooks, journal and newspaper articles, law reports, British standards, videos and other resources. 

You are encouraged to use items for our existing collections, where possible, as often suitable material will already be available. If your requested item is not already in our Library, your librarian will check if it is available to license. This will depend on the cost and the number of students. The Programme Director has to sign off spends above a certain level. Where items are not available, the Library team will work with you to select and acquire additional content. 

Read our Online Library guidance for more detailed information and view the Online Library briefing video.

Further details can be found in the Sourcing texts for academic programmes policy document.

Example activities

These activities give an example of how to make the reading activities more active and guided. 

5. Lectures

Another way of providing information to students is through lecture videos, which you can film in-house with our studio team. 

We can facilitate a range of different video options:

You will have a workshop with a member of our video team around the same time as your learning design workshops, where they introduce you to different options and advise on what works best for your proposed module content. 

At MDP stage, you will need to specify the title of your video, the type of video it will be (from the list above) and the predicted length of your video. At production stage, you will then provide the full scripts and slides (if using) for these videos. 

We budget for approximately 50 minutes of in-house video material per week. For a 10-week module, this would be around 5 x 10-minute videos per week.

6. Third-party videos

There might already be videos out there that provide the information you want to give to students in an engaging and interesting way.

Some sources for this include: 

• YouTube
• Ted Talks
• HS Talks (available through our Online Library)
• SAGE videos (available through our Online Library):
• research methods 
• psychology
• business and management

Restrictions

Please bear in mind that, due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to download and host external content (e.g. from YouTube) on the platform. Some sites will produce content that is only accessible in the UK (e.g. the BBC) and therefore cannot be used at all. It is also important to bear in mind the source of a video uploaded on YouTube, as sometimes videos are uploaded by someone who does not own the copyright – your academic editor will check this and advise you if you cannot use the video. 

Two more things to bear in mind: 

• Access: Not all students can access externally hosted videos for various reasons (e.g. personal accessibility reasons or because the website is banned in their country)
• Link reliability: Videos are sometimes removed from their host platform after a site update and so the link stops working. 

Because of this, we ask that any external videos are accompanied by either: 

• a summary of the video (this must allow students to gain the same level of knowledge as they would have when watching the video)
• a written alternative for the video (e.g. an article, blog post, book chapter that explores the same concepts). 

Please note that, for copyright reasons, we cannot host transcripts of videos on the platform. 

7. Present and explain: examples