Quality Course Design

Upon successful completion of this tutorial, you will:

1. Understand the need for an integrated approach to course design.
2. Identify some important situational factors that might influence the course you intend to design.
3. Describe the context for your course and your eventual syllabus.

Situational Factors

An initial step in design a course is to size up the situation carefully.  Review information about the teaching and learning situation and in some cases, gather additional information.  Situational factors provide the backdrop against which important decisions about the course will be made. 

There are a number of potentially important situational factors that affect the design of the course including:

1. Specific context of the teaching/learning situation. How many students are in the class? Is the course at the lower division, upper division, or graduate level? How long and frequent are the class meetings? Will the course be delivered live, online, in a laboratory, etc.? What physical elements of the learning environment will affect the class?
2. General context of the learning situation. What learning expectations are placed on this course by the university, the college, one or more of the institution’s curricula, one or more professions, and society in general?
3. Nature of the subject. Is this subject primarily theoretical, practical, or a combination? Is it primarily convergent or divergent? Are there important controversies or recent changes within the field?
4. Characteristics of the learners. What are the life situations of the learners (what percent work, have family responsibilities, have a specific professional goal, etc.)? What prior knowledge and experiences relevant to this subject have students had? What are their goals and expectations of the course? What are their preferred learning styles?
5. Characteristics of the teacher. What beliefs and values does the teacher have about teaching and learning? What level of knowledge does she/he have about the subject? What are his/her teaching strengths and weaknesses?

Situational factors impose definite limitations and guidelines on those seeking to design a significant learning experience. For example, if the course is intended to provide background for more advanced courses, it is essential to understand the expectations of those teaching such courses. Similarly, if most students begin the class with an apathetic attitude toward the subject matter, the course design needs to recognize this and incorporate special motivational features.

Purposeful teaching and learning is a systematic process in which every component of the system is crucial to successful learning. These components - the learners, the instructor, the instructional materials, the delivery system, and the learning and performance environments - must all effectively interact with each other to bring about desired learning outcomes. Any change in components can adversely affect the others and the eventual learning outcomes (Dick and Carey, 2009).

For this reason, the first step to designing a course that will provide students with valuable and lasting learning experiences is to accurately identify all the important Situational Factors that might influence the course you intend to design. Failure to adequately identify these factors can ruin the entire instructional event (Dick and Carey, 2009).

PLEASE NOTE: As you begin identifying the situational factors that may influence your course, you may discover that you need to gather some additional information through interviews with other members of your department, research using departmental and programmatic documents, etc. The information you gather now will be useful in identifying learning goals, formulating feedback and assessment, and selecting appropriate teaching and learning activities.

Directions:

Please use Worksheet 1:  Situational Factors Analysis to identify important situational factors for your course.

The more details you provide, the more likely you will be able to design an integrated course for significant learning experiences.  The information gathered will help you formulate your transformational goal and learning outcomes. 

Please use the Time for Reflection worksheet to keep a journal of your reflections.

1. What did you learn through the process of identifying situational factors for your course?
2. How might the information gathered help you design your course?

1. Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2009). The systematic design of instruction (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Pearson.
2. Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
3. Gagné, R. M., Wager, W. W., Golas, K. E., & Keller, J. M. (2005). Principles of instructional design (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.