Before you even begin thinking about books and content for your course, you might step back to reflect on your course. We'll call this the analysis phase of course design. This is also known as a needs assessment. Just read through the items below and think about it for now. Make notes about things that come to mind.
The Course/Instructor
- Why are you doing this course?
- What is your timeline for developing this course?
- How will you schedule your time to work on this course?
- Do you need to schedule ongoing consultations with an Instructional Designer at the Center for Online Learning?
- Do you need to schedule ongoing GeorgiaVIEW training at the Center for Online Learning?
- How much and what material do you have to create for this course?
- Will anyone else be involved with the design of the course?
- Other instructors
- Student assistants
- What is your teaching philosophy?
- What teaching strategies do you use?
- How will you do this in an online environment?
Students
- Who are your students?
- How many students will you have?
- Why do they need this course?
- prerequisite to higher level course? (What do they need from your course to succeed in subsequent courses?)
- elective?
- course in major?
- Do your students need to learn everything in the book? (Perhaps not!)
- What do they really need to learn?
- What is ESSENTIAL for them to take away from this course?
- What is JUST NICE to know or worth BEING FAMILIAR WITH?
- How much emphasis needs to be placed on "nice to know" and "worth being familiar with?"
- How will you handle that?
- What do they already know?
- What do you need to teach?
- Do you need to do a pre-test to see "where they are" and "where you need to begin?"
- Will you need to do a review with the students if they need remedial work?
- What types of learning need to happen? (Knowledge, skills, attitude?)
- What levels of learning need to occur? (based on Bloom's Taxonomy)
- knowledge (just remember stuff, facts)
- comprehension (describe stuff, see relationships)
- Application (apply methods, concepts)
- Analysis (identify parts, compare concepts)
- Synthesis (organize or build something new)
- Evaluation or Creativity (values, expressions)
Goal
What is the big picture for this course? In general terms, what is going to happen?
Objectives
- What is the "enduring information" that you want students to remember after instruction?
- Are there external accreditation agencies, programs, or university standards that drive course content? If so, are your objective statements and assessments based on the standards?
- What are the specific learning objectives (expected student learning outcomes) for this course?
- What will the students be able to do, or how will they demonstrate that learning has taken place?
- How will you assess the objectives?
|
