In many programs, there will be 40+ courses that must be designed. In the ideal situation, courses are not designed until the program is designed and courses will be reviewed and adjusted after any program adjustment.

A course design should be based on outcomes derived from the program design. The design should consider the prior courses it is built upon (when it was taught, what was emphasized, what was assessed), other courses delivered to the same cohort in the same term (what can be leveraged, reinforced), and where the course’s outcomes will be used in the future and what those other courses rely upon.



There also must be feedback and possible program design adjustments. The program design or revision might have unrealistic expectations or create situations that need to be phased in. The program design cannot be a concrete, inflexible structure and must recognize the infeasible and impractical. You might not have much say in these matters, but you can always innocently raise questions in a subtle way; to see if you can place the crumbs for others to find.

If a course is primarily knowledge based with assessments based on doing the typical problems in a textbook, the course might take a week or two to design. It is possible to design a course in several minutes or hours as well, but there is a difference between a good design and any old design. A bad design is still a design. Just like everyone plans and everyone solves problems daily, there are good plans, good planners, good problem-solvers... and then there are the rest. It is also likely that a good course design will involve multiple individuals.

If the course attempts to develop intellectual abilities and associated skills, the course design can take many months and many meetings. To introduce ANY cognitive skill (beyond simple comprehension and memorization) will take a dramatically different type of course than most courses. You cannot ‘teach’ someone a skill per se, you have to be more of a coach and think like a coach. You will have to reduce the knowledge, memorization and “fact aspect” of the course and expand the experiential components; allowing for constructive failure, feedback, reflection, and deliberate practice. These aspects will take time to design and incorporate, especially if the instructor does not have any formal training in learning and cognitive skill acquisition (by formal training, we mean actual academic studies and not a short workshop here or there). The instructor might have to be assisted by suitably trained resources.

We suggest that courses be seriously re-evaluated every 2-3 years with respect to the learning outcomes and how well things have been going. This might require an occasional service or course load reduction depending on what is involved and what is found. Ok, we realize that this might be hard to do in many departments, so this might be a very rhetorical observation. Nevertheless, it is what should be done in our opinion.

We also suggest that each course have ‘necessary’ aspects identified as part of the program review. Certain aspects of a course should be within the instructor’s scope, but the course is not the instructor’s, it is the institution’s and if there are certain requirements to satisfy institutional outcomes and requirements, the instructor should be obligated to conform. The instructor is being paid to deliver the outcomes. If the instructor wants to deviate and introduce a change to a core concept or method, there should be effective processes for this to be considered and if appropriate, pilots or experiments conducted. An instructor should not have 100% control over a course with everything being within the realm of academic freedom.

Observations…

• You should start with the expectations as laid out by the program requirements and design. These should inform you about what your outcomes should be. Without this knowledge, why are you teaching what you are teaching? The program should identify the knowledge domains, and the cognitive and intellectual abilities to introduce or further develop.
• There might be department expectations for pedagogy and content.
• You should consider vertical and horizontal integration of content and pedagogy.
• Never forget the official description in the calendar.
• Similar to a program review, use phrases like: we want 80% of the students to do xxx in 80% of the cases at a level of 80% acceptable performance. This should set reasonable and feasible targets!
• You should list the skills and knowledge domains out. Do not rely on verbal dialog. Document it. This will allow you to revisit the list in the future when reviewing outcomes and course performance.
• Document the ecosystem within which the course functions. For example, the prior courses you leverage or depend upon, the knowledge and skills supposedly retained, any complementary courses in the same term, and the course outcomes that subsequent courses rely upon. We recommend documenting these and making them part of the course documentation. It is easy to forget or overlook co-dependencies.
• Once you have the list and requirements, you can use various techniques to work backwards. What are the ‘causes’ that will result in the ‘effects’ you wish. For example, you can use the methods covered in the cause and effect note, or other methods to work backwards and deal with the course curriculum; layer by layer. You should not do a “helter skelter” approach to deciding; we should teach this then, this other topic then, etc.
• This process should provide insights into the types of learning experiences needed, the sequence, the focus, etc. This will also provide insights into the course load. Are you trying to do too much? We personally believe in the axiom: teach less, teach it better! Or, quality over quantity.
• The course design should be reviewed and discussed with others. As the course material and assessments are developed, they should also be reviewed and discussed with others.
• Each topic or specific outcome should be reflected upon; what is the appropriate methodology to use. It is unlikely, with the exception of the simplest and foundational of courses, that the same methods make sense for all the outcomes.
• If the course design implies new teaching and assessment methodologies, the course design and outcomes need to be adjusted for risk management and the final state evolved into. This might take several course offerings and it will take what it takes. You cannot wish it into being something it is not.
• Assuming that the goal is to do a decent job on a course and have it deliver what the institution is expecting, there are a few things that need to line up. The obvious list includes knowing what is expected (knowledge and skills) and what is relied upon by other courses. Instructors should take these seriously and not cavalierly dismiss what has been done in the past and go rogue. There might have been a reason why something was done and the legacy should be understood before history is trodden upon.

• Having a team helping is very, VERY important. Even if all they do is listen, it is useful to discuss the requirements and design with someone. It helps if the someone knows what the course is supposed to do and what the basic content is (or might be). It helps if you have someone who is an expert (at least the journeyman level) in pedagogy and understands learning. Just because someone was a student does not mean they know how to teach or how learning works! We have heard senior academics observe that graduate students and junior faculty really do not need training – they saw enough teaching while getting their degrees. Interesting thought, but 100% wrong.
• We also like the situation where the helpers can sit in a bit while the course is launched and can give the instructor key feedback on class response, instructor delivery, etc. We see this peer evaluation and feedback necessary and not a nicety or icing on the cake. The helpers should also participate in the post-course debriefing and reflections. Discussions about lessons learned, what assumptions were off, what went well, not so well, and how the course should be adjusted. If the helpers were involved in the course design, they can usually provide a deeper critique.
• Consciously ‘simulating’ the term and thinking about course load and conflicts with other courses (e.g., all assignments, projects due on the same day, or multiple tests in the same morning) is necessary. It does not hurt to have a student go through the course design and give a general assessment of load and effort required to do the tasks and associated learning activities. As an instructor, you can guess and do some estimating, and you should, but you should also have someone else do the assessment as well. If a student is not available, one of the course ‘helpers’ can probably give an assessment. It is unacceptable to design and deploy a course without having a good grasp of the student effort. Capacity planning is a necessary element of course design
• Risk management is also very important, and this is where you consider what is novel and innovative to the students (teaching methods and assessment methods) and what is novel and innovative to the instructor. It is risky to introduce too many new things at a time, for either the instructor or class. The instructor and program must exhibit patience as well as practice change management. The perfect storm is when the instructor has just learned two or more ‘really great’ ideas to try in class and these ‘really great’ ideas are also new to the students. Not a good decision. Very stressful for all parties.
• It is necessary to use the appropriate methods for the given situation. An instructor should not do XXX just because XXX was used in another course, presented at a seminar, or at another institution. The methods and processes associated with XXX must be suitable for the immediate context; satisfying all of the critical assumptions.

Further reading

• Course Design Heuristic. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo. https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/planning-courses/course-design/course-design-heuristic
• Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise.