To develop a curriculum, determine a clear course topic and establish a timeline for the course. Create individual units to cover the main ideas of your chosen topic and clearly define the learning goals for each unit. Then, choose the materials, content, and experiences students will use during the course to understand each unit.
Your online course curriculum is a series of programs that should be carefully designed to work together to achieve a larger goal for your students. Note: I say ‘online', but the same concepts will apply to offline workshops or a seminars too.
Before you can start a curriculum you need to establish exactly what you'll be teaching and to whom. Thanks! Is a curriculum prepared for each class? No. A curriculum is a general guideline of what you wish to cover throughout the school year.
It’s useful to think of creating a training outline as an incremental process that includes the following six steps: Step 1: The basics. Who is your audience? What is the broadly defined topic you need to cover?
Course outlines, or syllabi, are an integral part of course design. They generally summarize our course design plans and serve as a “contract” with our students regarding the course described. But how do you create a useful outline?
Other course policies – If attendance and participation are not part of your course grade, consider outlining your expectations about them in a separate section. This is also a logical place to discuss issues such as academic dishonesty.
Remember, too, that while you may have reviewed your outline with your students on the first day, they might not refer back to it throughout the term. Be sure to reiterate critical information such as deadlines and course policies that you wish to highlight.
Any institution-required statements – Some institutions, faculties, or departments may require instructors to include standardized statements in their course outlines about issues such as academic dishonesty or classroom conduct. Check with your department to see if such requirements exist.
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.
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.
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.
1. Define the purpose of the curriculum. Your curriculum should have clear topic and purpose. The topic should be appropriate for the age of the students and the environment in which the curriculum will be taught. If you are asked to design a course, ask yourself questions about the general purpose of the course.
Curriculum is the all-encompassing definition of the material being taught for a segment being referenced -- whether that be an entire course or one lesson. So you could reference today’s class curriculum or the curriculum for the entire course. A lesson plan, on the other hand, is simply one class worth of curriculum (though if you were unable to finish in one class, sometimes you will continue that “lesson” in another class).
Although formative assessments are usually a part of the daily lesson plan, they can also be included in the unit descriptions. Examples include journal entries, quizzes, collages, or short written responses.
Make a template. Curricula are usually graphically organized in a way that includes a space for each component. Some institutions ask educators to use a standardized template, so find out what is expected of you. If no template is provided, find one online or create your own template. This will help you keep your curriculum organized and presentable.
This article has been viewed 566,414 times. A curriculum often consists of a guide for educators to teach content and skills. Some curricula are general road maps, while others are quite detailed and give instructions for day to day learning. Developing a curriculum can be quite challenging, especially when expectations have such a large range.
Emily Listmann is a private tutor in San Carlos, California. She has worked as a Social Studies Teacher, Curriculum Coordinator, and an SAT Prep Teacher. She received her MA in Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 2014.
The objectives are the basic road map to the learning experience. They draw the focus and drive the instruction. Before you can start a curriculum you need to establish exactly what you'll be teaching and to whom.
Your online course curriculum is a series of programs that should be carefully designed to work together to achieve a larger goal for your students.
The overall goal of that curriculum is to help people grow their business by attracting and retaining customers and building relationships with them that result in long-term sales.
The most popular are: 1 Build a paid membership site, where the courses are available on-demand and you charge a monthly subscription 2 Set up a dripped content continuity program, where the courses are released monthly and you continue to add more over time, with no specific end date 3 Give free, bonus access to your membership site to customers who buy your larger coaching packages 4 Create a training series of online courses that's for a set period of time (eg, 6 months) and is auto-delivered monthly or at your specified intervals 5 Schedule a series of live workshops that are delivered once each, and then release them periodically (ie, not always available) 6 Run a multi-day offsite event, where you deliver a different course each day for a limited number of people for a premium price.
Write down a description of their gender, job, background, values, goals, challenges, etc.
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.
If so, highlight that in your framework and save a spot for an integrated lesson. This will help ensure that your curriculum is engaging and meaningful for your students.
We like to include a survey link so that teachers can share what they love and what they wish was different. This helps us to make small tweaks without having to totally revamp everything again.
The Common Core Standards are already broken into topics like Operations and Algebraic Functions. Similarly, the National Arts Standards also have basic topics to explore like Organize and Develop Artistic Ideas and Work. You can use these as a basic outline, or your can do something totally different.
Remember that most topics will be spiraled throughout the curriculum. But there are certainly time periods when you’ll focus on a topic more deeply. Identify these time periods as an overview to your curriculum.
Some teachers want a scripted curriculum, others don’t. Some schools want you to have a very specific lesson outline included and others are much more relaxed. The key here is to create a curriculum design that makes sense for you and your students. Sketch it out and create a basic template that you’ll use throughout the process.
Susan Riley is the founder and CEO of The Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM. She focuses on teacher professional development in arts integration, STEAM, 21st century learning skills, and technology. She is also a published author and frequent presenter at national conferences on Arts Integration and STEAM education. Susan holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education from the prestigious Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ and a Master of Science in Education Administration from McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. She lives in Westminster, MD with her husband and daughter. Email Susan
What we’ve learned along the way is that curriculum design has a structure to it that can be replicated and leveraged by anyone. So whether you are looking to revamp your curriculum or write one from scratch, you can use this process. Here’s the basics of what we did – we’ll go into these in more detail below:
To make sure your curriculum is effective, you'll need to measure student achievement in relation to the objectives and goals set up for your class. Include information about what kinds of assessments you're going to use throughout the year - whether they be chapter quizzes, student projects, or final exams - so you're prepared to check out what your students are learning.
Curriculum templates are useful tools that allow you to plan out the topics you're going to teach over the school year or semester. These templates should include the educational standards you're basing your instruction on, expectations for student learning, specific information about instructional units, and strategies for assessing student ...
However, these goals outline the behaviors students need to demonstrate in order to meet the learning objectives or standards you've set for the course. They might involve being able to correctly answer questions about a specific historical period, properly spell a certain number of words, or accurately complete a series of math problems.
Enrolling in a course lets you earn progress by passing quizzes and exams.
You should also break the school year down into educational units. Give each unit a title, record how much time you intend to spend on it, and go over what you expect your students to learn. You can also record what materials (textbooks, extra handouts, online tools) you plan to use for each unit.
You can research tips for creating your curriculum before you get started. Study.com offers a Curriculum Development for Teachers course that can help you review the steps in the curriculum planning and development processes, the different types of curricula, strategies for selecting learning goals, and tips for choosing the right assessments. You'll be able to watch the video lessons in this course whenever you like, and you can work through the quizzes at your own pace. You can even contact educational experts if you have any questions about what you're studying.
It’s useful to think of creating a training outline as an incremental process that includes the following six steps:
Step 6: Evaluation, assessment, reflection. How will you determine if participants have learned what they need to know? How will you find out if participants thought the training was effective and enjoyable? How will you learn lessons from this training that can be applied to future training?
One thing your participants need to know early on in the training is why it is important. You need to make the purpose serious enough that everyone knows there’s a lot at stake to help incentivize engagement. For the leadership training example, I might emphasize how important it is for the company’s future that we develop leaders internally, perhaps even presenting some evidence about promote-from-within strategies. It will also help immensely if you can combine this with some kind of opening sequence or activity that helps spur deep, enthusiastic commitment to fully participate. In the leadership training example, I might use something like the Stand by Your Quote activity to get people thinking about leadership concepts right from the start.
What exactly do you need people to know or be able to do by the end of the training? Make each of your objectives SMART. Many of you might be familiar with the SMART acronym as it applies to goal-setting, but it’s the perfect framework to use when creating training/learning objectives as well. In this framework, each objective should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Using the SMART model gets you thinking in all the right directions and covers all the bases when creating a training outline. For leadership training, some example learning objectives might include the following:
Of course, if your training efforts are entirely offline or in person and you need to manually document those efforts, then you might still need the old-fashioned paper and pen/pencil approach or even manually collecting documentation in an Excel report. While these methods work for some organizations, we must recommend against only relying on these as many disasters have easily wiped out such records. Consider using a web-based learning management system like eLeaP to help you organize this process.