Course Design
All courses at Ryerson must follow the policies set by the Toronto Metropolitan University Senate. The two policies most relevant to the course design process are (PDF file) Policy 145: Undergraduate Course Management [pdf] and (PDF file) Policy 151: Graduate Studies Course Management [pdf]
Once you’ve reviewed Ryerson policy and embark on the process of course design or redesign, it can be helpful to keep in mind the five principles of good course design proposed by L. Dee Fink. Good course design should:
- Challenge students to higher level learning
- Use active forms of learning
- Give frequent and immediate feedback to students on the quality of their learning
- Use a structured sequence of different learning activities
- Have a fair system for assessing and grading students (Fink, L.D. (external link) ).
One effective model for the course design process is “backwards design.” In backwards design, the first step is to identify your course learning outcomes or what you hope students will achieve by the end of your course. The next step is to think about the best way to assess whether or not students have met the desired learning outcomes or how they will demonstrate competency. The final step is to ask the question “What approaches promote understanding, interest, and competency in the subject area?” (Nomme & Birol, 2014) and use the answer determine the most appropriate way to teach your content in order to ensure student success in the course (Wiggins & McTighe).
In the backwards course design model, how you teach is as important as what you teach.
Carnegie Mellon's page on how to Design and Teach a Course (external link) has an excellent step-by-step plan for creating an effective course using backwards design. We have modified their plan to create a Ryerson specific plan with links to many of our relevant documents.
- What textbook or course materials will you use and how will you make them available to students?
- Put necessary items on reserve at the library or order textbooks from the campus store.
- Contact your subject librarian to see what kind of help they can provide for your students
- Will you be working with TA/GAs? What will you have to do to prepare them for the course?
- Will you be including any technical components, such as clickers, lecture capture, web conferencing, or course blogs?
- Request a D2L course shell
- Just before the course begins:
- Finalize and test your course shell with a dummy student account.
- Check the status of your books and course materials
- (PDF file) Meet with TAs [pdf]
- Visit your classroom
Get to know your students and their prior knowledge, learning goals, and motivations via some sort of pre-assessment
- How does your course fit into your department’s curriculum or course sequence?
- Is there material that must be covered to support later courses in the program?
- Is your class required or an elective?
- How many students can enroll in the course?
- What time of day is the class scheduled for?
- How long and how often will your class meet?
- Are your students first year undergraduates, upper level undergraduates, or graduate students?
- What are the time constraints on your course? How much flexibility will students have to complete the requirements for your course? Are they currently doing placements or working full time jobs? Will they be able to meet outside of class to complete group assignments? Are there major assignments for other courses in their program due at specific times? Are there any major holidays or university events in the midst of your course?
- What classroom will you be teaching in? Is it a large lecture hall, a small room with flexible seating, etc.?
- What technology will be available to you?
“Learning outcomes are statements that predict what learners will gain as a result of learning… A carefully thought-out learning outcome will give a solid indication of what kinds of assessment are appropriate, and of the skills and knowledge the learner will have to demonstrate to pass.”
An effective learning outcomes is student-centred, breaks down tasks to focus on specific cognitive processes, and is measurable (Carnegie Mellon). When writing learning outcomes for your course, ask “By the end of this course, what should students know? What should they be able to do and are there any attitudes or values you are hoping they will develop?”
A typical learning outcome begins with a phrase such as “By the end of this course, students will be able to…” followed by an verb that defines a specific action that students will have to complete in order to achieve the outcome.
For example, if you are teaching a course in which students are exposed to sustainable construction and its principles, a learning outcome for this course could be “By the end of this course, students will be able to describe a variety of sustainable construction methods and articulate the underlying principles.” Outcomes should be phrased in a way that is measurable, so that evidence can be provided to substantiate learning. Avoid vague expressions that are difficult to measure such as “appreciate” or “understand.”
By selecting the appropriate verbs for your learning outcomes, you can precisely set the level of difficulty of your course. These verbs can be chosen using a learning framework. Learning frameworks organize the many potential forms of learning into a concise structure detailed what is to be learned and at what level. One of the most well-known learning frameworks is Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.
Bloom identified three domains of educational objectives:
- Cognitive (Knowledge) - to know
- Psychomotor (Skills) - to do
- Affective (Attitude) - to value (Bloom, B., 1956. Revised by Krathwohl et al., 2002).
For each domain, there is a framework of six categories. Visualized as a pyramid, these categories lie along a continuum that movies from “simple to complex," "concrete to abstract” (Vanderbilt University). For each step in the pyramid, a new set of verbs are available. By selecting one of these verbs for your learning outcome, you determine the level of your course. First and second year courses, for example, might only require students to meet learning outcomes from the categories of remember, understand and apply, while a capstone project in a fourth year course will ask students to create something new.
The cognitive domain is the most commonly applied framework in higher education. The graphic below lists verbs that can be used to write learning outcomes at every level of the framework. For example, a learning outcome set at the bottom level of “remember” might only ask students to “define” or “list,” while a learning outcome set at the highest level of “create,” might ask students to “design,” “assemble,” or “construct.”
“Bloom’s Taxonomy,” Vanderbilt University. CC BY 2.0 (external link) .
When determining the assessment methods for your course, ask yourself:
- “What will the students' work on the activity tell me about their level of competence on the targeted learning objectives?
- How will my assessment of their work help guide students’ practice and improve the quality of their work?
- How will the assessment outcomes for the class guide my teaching practice?”
To learn more about designing assessments, visit our page on assessing learning.
What instructional activities will both “engage students with the material and enable them to meet the objectives” set for the course?
- “What kinds of activities will students need to engage in to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge?”
- “How can you organize these activities to provide sufficient practice?”
- “How can you sequence them so that skills build upon one another?”
To learn more about instructional strategies visit Teach a Course.
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