Course Design

This page is dedicated to the over-arching premise of course design and to give you, the instructor, the resources and support that you need. Don't forget that you can always reach out to the CPS Design Team for help at any time during either course design or, later, course development and advancement.

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Getting Started

There are several ways a new course development might be initiated. You might be developing a new course from scratch. Or you could be customizing a course originally designed by another faculty member. Or perhaps you just want a fresh start for your own material?

Your particular situation will help determine the amount of time, energy, and resources will be needed to develop or modify the course. For faculty that are starting from scratch, we recommend visiting the course development process section on the course design resources page to explore a more thorough overview of recommended steps forward. 

With any course development, you and your Program Director will need to discuss the status of the course and review the learning outcomes, concepts and skills that students are expected to have mastered by the conclusion of the course and program. The program and course objectives will guide your focus and energy. 

Once your learning goals have been identified, you can design assignments that will demonstrate how well students are achieving these goals.

Faculty are strongly encouraged to leverage their practitioner expertise and look for ways to bring authentic learning and engagement into their teaching. Authentic learning should be viewed as practical skills that students in the field could immediately put into practice the next day.

An easy example of this is reimagining a traditional written assignment into a more pragmatic demonstration of writing skills using industry-style templates or resources that will more effectively represent your industry, such as memos or case files. Think about the skills that students could immediately put to use in their current jobs to make them better employees and professionals in the field.

For more information on integrating authentic learning and assessment into your course visit the Course Enhancements section.

The section below will help you put the information you’ve explored above (course/program objectives, scope of work, and authentic learning) into practice. The course design essentials section below will dive deeper into some of the critical areas where your time and energy should be focused for improving your teaching and course design skills. 

The resources on this page are intended to support and empower you to make improvements to your curriculum and make you a better educator.

Our hope is that you will use the information on this website to continuously modify and curate your course to meet the evolving needs of your students and your industry.

If you feel stuck or need some extra inspiration, please feel free to reach out to the CPS Design Team and we will be happy to support you. We’re all striving to make CPS the best it can be.

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Course Design Essentials

The Syllabus

There are many examples of good syllabi, and many ways to go about writing ones. But all good syllabi contain: 

1. Basic course information (course title, meeting location, and time).
2. Instructor information (office, office hours, phone, email, website).
3. Course description and rationale (what is the course about and why does it fit in with the rest of the university's or department's curriculum?)
4. Course goals/objectives (What will the students learn from this course? List specific learning outcomes the course is intended to produce. "By the end of this course, successful students will be able to...").
5. Format and procedures (How will the course be structured and how will classes be taught? Will there be discussions? An opportunity to ask questions?).
6. Course requirements (readings, homework, participation tests, papers, projects).
7. Grading procedures (What will be graded? How will the grading percentages be distributed among assignments?).
8. Academic integrity information; disability services statement; emergency (please refer students to the GW academic integrity code; include the disability syllabus statement; and emergency preparedness information.
9. Course schedule (dates of class meetings, topics covered, readings/problems/assignments due, test or presentation dates)
10. Suggestions for achieving course goals and meeting academic expectations (What have students done in the past to help them perform well? What academic resources exist to help students?)

You can download a syllabus template, as well as look at an syllabus example produced by Professor Jeanine Guidry of the Graduate School for Political Management (PSPR) using a basic template produced by CPS instructional designers.

 

Course Mapping

Course design begins in one of two ways: 

1. Forward Design. Build a course map from the ground up. Have an idea of how you are going to break down the subject, then create learning outcomes and assessments that fit around the major themes.
2. Backward Design. Start with the assessments that fulfill your measurement of the learning outcomes (see below), and then fill in lectures and supporting materials as needed.

Here's an example Course Map from the Publishing program.

Unit (General topic)	Objectives (Actions to be performed)	Assessments (Scenario to evaluate objectives)	Lectures (Sequenced to support assessment)
Unit 2: Book Design Process	Communicate effectively with a book designer through a design brief.	Choose a book that you'd like to create a new edition for. Develop a design brief for the book.	2.1 Understanding the Role of a Book Designer 2.2 Developing a Design Brief 2.3 Design Process Expectations 2.4 Example Walkthrough - Textbook Project

Take a deeper dive into Curriculum Mapping.

You can download a blank Word template of the Course Map.

Learning Outcomes

Often referred to as "Learning Objectives" or "Learning Goals," we like to be more deliberate: these are what will happen, i.e. they focus on results rather than being merely aspirational. There are two types of Learning Outcomes: 

1. Course Outcomes. What the specific course will contribute to the academic program; and
2. Unit/Module Outcomes: The activities and outcomes within a given block of the course that, when taken as a whole, serve to address the Course Outcomes.

Writing outcomes should focus on actionable and measurable objectives: 

• What actions do you want students to be able to perform on the job?
• Ask students to evaluate, analyze, create, or perform some action that realistically applies to the course outcomes.

Following this formula when writing your learning outcomes: 

1. "The successful student will be able to: " (followed by individual bullet points).
2. Select an Action Verb using Bloom's Taxonomy as a guide.
3. Describe a disciplinary context.
4. " by ".
5. How you will measure the attainment of this outcome and what resources you will provide to the student to support their success (e.g., readings, lectures etc).

Steps 4 and 5 can also be thought of as the "Silent By" as it is not necessary to write or replicate these in the final course. It is important that you be able to articulate it to yourself as part of the Course Mapping process.

There are some "banned" words for writing Learning Outcomes because they are not measurable. These are: Identify, Recognize, Learn, Understand, and Know.

Take a deeper dive into Learning Outcomes.

Assessments

Assessments are a vital way to not only measure student success in given learning outcomes but also as a means for students to get an idea of how they are performing through feedback and remediation. 

For programs that focus on professional students, assessments should ideally put students through realistic scenarios (authentic learning) that ask students to take on the tasks of relevant roles for the course at hand.

• Assessments can take the form of projects, papers, and, in the online environment, discussion boards and interactive questions.
• Consider whether your course may be suited to a final project that is broken into pieces throughout the course.

Remember, not all assessments need to be graded. One example of this is knowledge checks that a student uses to measure their competence in a given area. Depending on the result of that check, the student can be pointed to helpful supporting materials or on to the next objective.

Take a deeper dive into Assessments and authentic learning.

Lectures & Content

The delivery of instructional materials to students can take many different forms, whether it is online, face-to-face, or a blended model such as with the "flipped classroom" approach.

For face-to-face courses, PowerPoint presentations are common. Similarly for online courses, slide-based PowerPoint presentations with voice-over narration are common, as are video-based presentations of various types.

As a professional practitioner and subject matter expert, the most important part of the lectures is your experiences and what you can bring to the lecture. Students can read textbooks, articles, white papers, or watch subject videos on their own. As a professor and professional, threading the broader literature with professional experience and insider knowledge is what makes courses at CPS the high-value offerings that they are.

Take a deeper dive into presentation types and options, including flipped classroom options.

Supporting Materials

The supporting materials that you provide for students can take many forms that move beyond the traditional course textbook. Here are some quick examples and food for thought: 

• Peer Review Journals. While textbooks offer a great snapshot of a given topic in time, journal articles often present deeper and more relevant dives into timely aspects of disciplines.
• News Articles, Podcasts, Videocasts. If relevant to your discipline, these can be a great way of showing some of the more public-facing aspects even if they are unlikely to remain “evergreen” and will not be changed on a regular basis.
• Interviews. Creating interviews for professional guest speakers can be a great way of providing another disciplinary perspective and, if they’re willing, can provide an opportunity for integration into authentic learning assessments.

Designing Feedback

Regular feedback is vital to student success and should be built into a course with intent. Perhaps the most common form of feedback, especially on assessments, comes in the form of the rubric.

There are three types of rubrics: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point.

Holistic rubrics are among the most common because, in the short term, they are the easiest to develop. They are also the least useful for students who are often unable to assess the criteria that allowed them to get that "A", or more importantly why they received a lower grade.

Holistic Rubric Example
 

Analytic rubrics break down the specific activities in an assessment that contribute to the final grade and assigns them points values, sometimes in association with category-based scaling (e.g. Above Expectations [5 pts], Meets Expectations [4 pts], Below Expectations [3 pts] etc.). Instructors assign points/categories and by viewing the rubric the student is able to see how their achieved their score and what they can do to improve.

Analytic Rubric Example
 

Finally, Single-Point rubrics are similar to Analytic rubrics in that they assign different categories that contribute to the final grade. The instructor then assigns what a "Meets Expectation" would mean for that category. Feedback is then offered by means of "Concerns" and "Exceeds".

The Single-Point rubric is less difficult to develop and contains less verbiage, which makes it more likely that students will read it. Area of "Concerns" and "Exceeds" are open-ended and not as defined as Analytic rubrics, which means that the instructor has more to write with the feedback.

Single-Point Rubric Example

 

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Regardless of the type of rubric used, offering feedback can be done in more ways than just text depending on the format of the course. Instructors can also offer direct feedback to the student on a one-to-one basis, offer broad guidelines to the class as a whole where appropriate, and provide summaries and guidance based upon the module's activities.

Taking the Next Steps

One of the hardest things to do as faculty, especially adjunct faculty, is to avoid the trap that, once a course development is complete, that's it. Nothing else to do here. These aren't the droids you were looking for.

Yet courses need continual re-evaluation for a number of reasons:

Student Evaluations

Every term/semester students evaluate you based upon how they view your performance while teaching as well as the structure, content, and relevance of the course. This can be hard to review, but students' perspectives can offer valuable insights on how you can alter the course to better suit their needs. As much as it might be frustrating, you should review these evaluations.

Pro-Tip: Work with your Program Director. Set up a meeting to talk over these evaluations from their perspective. They will be able to offer support and advice on the nature of student feedback and what it means to the program as a whole. Was a negative comment just a reflection of a specific student's approach across the program, or does it offer the opportunity to create a new teaching moment in your course? Do positive comments about assignments create the same opportunity for new teaching moments?

Your Own Reflections

As instructors, you're right there in the front of the class. You see how students react, or don't react, to your lectures, assignments, materials, and so forth. There might be sticking points where your students are not understanding certain concepts or places where students are continually going awry with assignments or just places where you think that there is a better way of doing things (e.g., interview rather than lecture).

These "glitches" offer you new teaching moment opportunities that you can begin to make positive changes to the course and your students' experiences.

Pro-Tip: Consider filling out this Course Reflection form created by Cody House. This will give you some structure to determine the scope of your changes when you talk to your Program Director. They may direct you to talk to an Instructional Designer specifically to support the changes that you're suggesting if you require something... special.

Disciplinary Advancement

No discipline is static even though some might change faster than others. You are the subject matter expert (SME) that was hired to teach the course and, as such, consult with your Program Director when you want to make a change.

Pro-Tip: While many of the changes may reflect different readings, if you're thinking about changing assignments or offering other resources, reach out to your assigned Instructional Designer or the CPS Design Team. They can work with you and your Program Director to figure out a schedule for development.

I Want to do Something Cool!

You've got an idea but you cannot quite figure out how to make it a reality or you don't have the skills to do so. You need help; support. Great! Click on the "Contact Us" button at the top of the page or click the following link: Contact Us.