Quality Course Design

In this tutorial, you will:

1. integrate your learning goals, assessments, and learning activities.
2. create a plan for your course.

In the DESIGN and BUILD phases, you have created strong primary components for the design of your course. Unless these components (learning outcomes, assessments, and learning activities) are aligned or work together, it would be difficult to provide students with effective teaching and learning experiences.  The learning activities must relate directly to the learning outcomes, and the assessments must measure what the students are learning.

To integrate or align these components, instructors must carefully review all previous decisions made before this Module 5. According to Fink (2003) some questions to consider under each phase include:

Situational Factors

• How well are the situational factors reflected in decisions about learning outcomes, feedback and assessment, and learning activities?
• What potential conflicts can be envisaged that may cause problems?
• Are there any disconnects between the instructor’s values and beliefs, student characteristics, the specific or general context of the course, or the nature of the subject as it relates to the course plan?

Learning Outcomes and Assessment

• How well do your assessment procedures address all learning outcomes?
• Does the planned feedback give students information about their progress on all of the learning outcomes?
• Do the learning outcomes include helping students learn how to assess their own performance?

Learning Outcomes and Teaching/Learning Activities

• Do the learning activities support all of the learning goals?
• Are some activities unrelated to any major learning outcome?

Teaching/Learning Activities and Assessment

• How well does the proposed feedback loop help students understand the criteria and standards used to access their performance?
• How well do the practice learning activities and the associated feedback opportunities prepare students for the eventual assessment activities?

According to Fink (2003), a good course design should meet the following criteria:

In-depth analysis of Situational Factors:

A thorough and systematic review of all the major factors that might influence the course you are designing.

Significant Learning Goals:

The learning goals comprise of different kinds of learning and higher order cognitive skills.

Educative Feedback and Assessment:

Provides educative assessment, forward-looking assessment, opportunities for self-assessments with clear criteria and standards, and feedback that is frequent, immediate, discriminating, and loving (FIDeLity).

Active Teaching/Learning Activities:

Includes opportunities for students’ engagement with course contents, experiential and reflective learning, and obtaining basic information and ideas.

Integration/Alignment:

All the major course components are aligned/integrated (Situational Factors, Learning Goals, Feedback and Assessment, Teaching and Learning Activities).

A graphical representation of a good course design is presented below.

Use the questions on Worksheet 5A: Integration Worksheet to help guide you through aligning course goals, assessments, and activities.

Use the Worksheet 5B: Course Alignment Matrix to document alignment between the key course design components.