Quality Course Design

We hope this part of the tutorial will help you:

• Formulate a transformational goal for your course.
• Formulate initial learning outcomes based, in part, upon the information you gathered during your Situational Factors Analysis.
• Acquire information for drafting your syllabus.

Learning is not limited to cognitive development. It is also a transformative process that involves affective development and identity formation (Komives & Shoper, 2004).

To formulate a goal that will result in a transformation, instructors should ask themselves: What lasting impact would I like this course to have on my students? How will it change them? In other words, what will distinguish students who have completed this course from students who have not?

Consider this example:

What is the transformational goal for your course?

In a single sentence, write down your Transformational Goal in the space provided on Worksheet 2A:  Transformational Goal

To determine the appropriateness and relevance of each of the six types of goals for a given course or other learning experience, key questions need to be asked.  Examples are given below:

1. Questions About Foundational Knowledge as a Goal. What key information (facts, terms, formulae, concepts, principles, relationships, etc.) is/are important for students to understand and remember? What key ideas or perspectives are important in this course?
2. Questions About Applications as a Goal. What kinds of thinking (critical, creative, practical) are important for students to learn? What skills are required? Should students be expected to learn how to manage complex projects?
3. Questions About Integration as a Goal. What connections should students recognize and make among ideas within this course? Among information, ideas, and perspectives from this course and those in other courses or areas? Between material in this course and the students’ personal, social, and/or work life?
4. Questions About Goals Related to Human Dimensions. What should students learn about themselves? What should they learn about understanding others and/or interacting with others?
5. Questions About the Appropriateness of Caring Goals.  What changes/values should students adopt? Should interests be affected? Feelings? Commitments?
6. Questions About “Learning How to Learn” as a Goal. What should students learn about how to be good students in a course like this? How to learn about this specific subject? How to become a self-directed learner (developing a learning agenda and a plan for meeting it)?

Writing Course Objectives

• From the overarching goal(s) instructors break out the course goals
• Normally, 3-8 objectives is a good number of objectives for a course
• Write objectives, using action verbs and considering the level of learning associated with each objective

Objectives should:

• Be stated clearly in the syllabus and made visible to students;
• Be present at both the course level and at the modules or unit level
• Align to the teaching/learning activities and assessments;
• Drive how the course is designed and taught;
• Be measurable indicators of student learning across the course and learning activities; and
• Address multiple levels of learning (in reference to Bloom's and/or Fink's taxonomies)

Developing measurable learning outcomes is a first step in assessing student learning. Learning outcomes are clear statements that describe the competencies that students should have upon the completion of a course. Effective learning outcomes state what students should know and be able to do as well as the depth of the learning that is expected. Learning outcomes need to be (SMART):

Specific —

Should be well defined, clear, and should state exactly what will be accomplished.

Measurable —

Provide a benchmark or target for students and instructor to determine the extent to which the target or benchmark has been achieved and by how much it has been exceeded or by how much it has fallen short of expectation.

Achievable —

Should be within the grasp of the students but also challenging.

Realistic —

Should be reasonable given the available resources. Learning outcomes should neither be easy nor impossible to attain, but somewhere in between.

Time-Framed —

Include a specific date by which each learning outcome will be completed. It is important to allow enough time to successfully implement the steps needed to achieve the objective, but not so much as to elicit procrastination.

Here are some helpful links for creating effective learning objectives:

Objectives Builder, ASU

Writing Clear Learning Objectives, BU

Guidelines for Writing Learning Objectives, University of Florida , IFAS

Please use Worksheet 2B:  Significant Learning Goals to formulate your course outcomes.  Be sure to include at least one outcome from each of the kinds of learning listed above.  It is important to remember that this initial list may well undergo significant revision as you continue course design. 

Once you have a final version of the significant learning goals for your course, you can enter them onto the SLO template and submit to your Department chair or Dean for documentation. 

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

1. How can these learning outcomes help you design your course?
2. What did you learn through the process of formulating your Significant Learning Goals for your course?

1. Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York, NY: Longman.
2. Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
3. Komives, S. R., & Schoper, S. (2006). Developing learning outcomes. In R. P. Keeling (ed.), Learning reconsidered 2: Implementing a campus-wide focus on the student experience (pp. 17–42). Washington, DC: ACPA: NASPA.