Draft a course schedule. Figure out how many weeks and class meeting there are for your course in a given term, and sketch out a basic calendar. Decide which topics, readings, concepts or activities will be covered each session.
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Jan 05, 2012 · Draft a course schedule. Figure out how many weeks and class meeting there are for your course in a given term, and sketch out a basic calendar. Decide which topics, readings, concepts or activities will be covered each session. In addition, schedule examinations, when assignments are due, and any other important dates.
Here are a few important considerations: Organizing Content - Each week or module might have several subunits or topics. It is best to break content into small pieces to allow for the most effective learning. Navigation - Students will often be navigating content without direct guidance. Your content should be provided in a logical and clear path.
Syllabus design. The syllabus provides the instructor and students with a contract, a common reference point that sets the stage for learning throughout the course. Make sure that your students have easy access to the course syllabus by handing out hard copies on the first day of class and (if applicable) posting a digital copy on the course ...
Provide specific information about required readings, including title, author (s), edition number and availability (from where they can be purchased or borrowed). It is helpful to the students to indicate how each reading relates to a particular topic …
When you’re working to plan your course content, you need to decide what level your audience is currently at. If they already know the basics of your topic and you’re going to help them advance in their skills or apply them in a new way, you don’t need to spell out the very beginning steps.
You can post a tweetasking your followers what they’re struggling with , or send a survey out to your email list.
But, you don’t have to be an expert and you don’t have to have experience teaching. What you do need to be is an authority and at least one step ahead of your audience. The more recently you were in your students’ shoes, the better you remember their pain points and, more importantly, how you overcame those pain points.
A course outline should include mapping your content to specific weeks or modules. This will help inform the creation of a detailed course syllabus.
It is best to break content into small pieces to allow for the most effective learning. Navigation - Students will often be navigating content without direct guidance. Your content should be provided in a logical and clear path.
Layout - Structure your content for online consumption, e.g., if a piece of text is too long, you run the risk of students not scrolling to the bottom of the page to continue reading. In this case, it might be worth further dividing your content to allow for a better user experience.
To put it quite simply, a course outline is a map of the knowledge you’ll include in your course. It shows where you will begin and where you will end. It also lists out all the major steps you will take in between.
Creating an outline that serves as a guide to the course is useful for both learners as well as for you so you can develop a more effective course .
Depending on how far down the path of microlearning you are going, lessons might only need to be a couple of minutes up to 10 to 15 minutes in length. There's not too much content in a 2-minute lesson so you really need to get at the heart of the topic and do so quickly if you're going that route.
These are great, but with most, you will have to manually re-type your ideas into other software to use them later on. However, if you're a visual learner, mind mapping is probably the best tool for you. You can also use Trello or other productivity software to outline and manage your projects.
The idea behind rapid eLearning is where you use every tool and strategy you can to potentially create a course in 2 to 3 weeks instead of taking several months. So within your lessons, outline the exact content you will cover.
There are some elements you may not have considered before your lesson planning, so starting with an outline is the best way to dig deeper into the topic and make it more interesting and informative to your learners.
Lastly, writing an outline first will make developing your course a much faster process.
A good course outline allows students to assess the course for fit with their learning needs, clearly understand what is expected of them and how they will benefit from the instruction.
A course description is an important part of the course outline. The course description needs to reflect exactly what will be covered in the course and how learning will be assessed by assignments and/or tests.
Creating a course outline template is an efficient way to standardize course outlines and catalog details for future revisions or offerings. It is an integral part of a course proposal.
Provide the name of the instructor, his or her contact information, web site and/or biographical information. The bio should stress the instructor’s qualifications that pertain to the subject matter. List the instructor’s degrees and professional qualifications.
For example, courses numbered from 100 to 200 are typically beginner or foundation courses whereas courses numbered 300 or higher are typically associated with a more advanced level discussion of the topic.
Prerequisites/Co-requisites. If the course is at an advanced level, it may be wise to request a prerequisite (a course that must be completed prior) or a co-requisite (a course that is taken concurrently). This ensures that students have a foundation level knowledge of the topic before completing the more advanced course.
Designing your course around activities that are most likely to lead students towards the goals you have defined will help them acquire and retain skills longer. Some goals can be achieved through listening to lecture or reading assigned texts. Others may require more active experimentation, practice or discussion. For example, writing , discussions, field work, service learning, problem solving or small group collaboration. No matter what combination of activities you choose always keep in mind how the core activity, as opposed to subject content, will progress students’ abilities. What will provide you with reliable evidence during the course that your students are learning and at the end of the course that they have obtained/mastered the abilities you envisioned at the beginning of the course? This is the part where you choose assignments, activities and other methods of assessment. For example, will you have weekly quizzes? objective tests? original research papers? presentations? performances? group or individual projects? Assessment is an important aspect of student learning. Make sure to think carefully when pairing assessments with learning objectives. For more on assessment design see our Assessing student learning page.
By asking yourself these questions at the onset of your course design process you will be able to focus more concretely on learning outcomes, which has proven to increase student learning substantially as opposed to merely shoehorning large quantities of content into a quarters worth of class meetings.
Inclusiveness: How can your syllabus help you create an inclusive atmosphere that welcomes all students? Some instructors include statements inviting participation from all students, honoring student diversity and differing points of view, or inviting requests for disability accommodations.
These components communicate to your students an accurate description of the course including the topics that will be cover, assignments and assessments students will be responsible for, as well as a clear source for policies and expectations.
Although courses may vary in size, subject matter or level, a systematic process will help you plan and structure your course and syllabus to effectively reach desired instructional goals. This page provides information that will guide you from the initial design phases of your course to polishing and distributing your syllabus. Course design.
The syllabus provides the instructor and students with a contract, a common reference point that sets the stage for learning throughout the course. Make sure that your students have easy access to the course syllabus by handing out hard copies on the first day of class and (if applicable) posting a digital copy on the course website.
Assignments, projects and exams: How will students demonstrate their learning? Include learning goals, estimated scope or length, assessment criteria and dates. Instructors typically include a breakdown, in point values or percentages, of how much each assignment or test contributes to a student’s final grade.
According to the University of Lethbridge’s Teaching Center, a course outline is a document that benefits students and instructors as it is essential when designing any course. Also known as a syllabus, a course outline serves as a planning tool. As the syllabus is written, it also guides the instructor’s development of ...
This is also the section that informs the students on what subjects they will be taking should they enroll. Some syllabuses also provide a small description of the subjects to give further detail on what they can expect for that subject.
The assessment overview is a grading guide that allows students to see what weightings can apply to the different assessment elements of a course. An example of an assessment overview is below.
Finally, a syllabus also works as a reference for colleagues, administrators, and accreditation agencies.
In some cases, some may refer to the syllabus to give the students an idea of what particular skills they would have obtained after completing the course.
Provide specific information about required readings, including title, author (s), edition number and availability (from where they can be purchased or borrowed). It is helpful to the students to indicate how each reading relates to a particular topic in the course. You may also like outline an essay.
If students need to provide evidence of learning by completing a multiple choice exam, then the activities in the schedule should prepare them for this assessment. Lectures, readings, small group and whole group discussions can all be activities that help the student meet their learning objectives.
A course plan includes not only the goals and the content topics, but also how the topics will be taught and what the students will do during the course. In order to achieve end-of-semester goals, students must have practice during the semester. If goals focus solely on mastery of content, then practice in reiterating and explaining ...
Course plan: the instructor will divide the course into five sections that each introduce a topic, cover related background content items, and present detailed examples of both the hazard and related land-use decisions.
How might we align the course plan better with the goals? While the students might well be able to reiterate considerable content at the end of the semester, the course as planned does not make it likely that the students will be successful at the goal of independent analysis because the course has not focused on providing them practice during the semester. Changing the course plan to include more than coverage of the content topics would do the trick.
Content topics: making safe turns, backing up safely, driving in slippery conditions, nighttime driving, and so on.
Sometimes it's easier to understand by examining bad examples rather than good ones. So, let's start with examples of two courses in which the course plan falls short of successfully merging goals and content, making it very difficult for students to achieve the goals.
On the other hand, the course plan itself is not promising. The plan suggests that the course will focus on the instructor presenting the content to the students with the assumption that, filled with a boatload of content, students will be able at the end of the semester to do their own analyses and evaluations of unfamiliar situations even though they have had no personal practice at it during the semester. This is really not very different from the driver ed course described in the previous example.
Anyone can come up with three points on any topic in less than three minutes. That's quick. 2) Solid Substance: Three points give the article a decent amount of substance, even if you weren't quite sure you were going to write about just a few minutes ago.
1) Focus Quickly : When you pick on three things, it allows you to focus quickly on three big features, benefits and issues. Okay so they may not be big features. They may be the tiniest, most overlooked features. They may not be benefits, but may be three big mistakes that people make.