Speaker 1: Welcome. In this PowerPoint presentation, you will learn about aligning your coursework to the stated learning objectives found in your syllabus. In this tutorial, we won't be able to go into depth about instructional design, but I do want to point out the ADDIE model to you as an example of design since it is something to keep in mind as you gain experience. As you can see, it is a circular model. The initials stand for Analyze, as in analyze your students, who they are, at what level they are at, and analyze your subject matter. Design. This is the planning stage where we think about how best to present the material and assess the students' learning. Scope is the time for building the course, creating the lessons and tests, and putting together a syllabus. Implement is where the rubber meets the road, in other words, class time. And then we evaluate. Evaluation happens formally at the end of the semester, but it also happens when we walk out of the classroom feeling great about how the lesson went, or slapping our forehead and wondering what went wrong. Some instructors feel comfortable asking the students later or doing a midterm informal course review to get feedback. It's also helpful to talk to colleagues about their teaching methods. We use that evaluation piece to return to the process and continually revise and redesign as we gain experience. The important part of instructional design being circular is that you should expect to evaluate your experience, analyze what went well and what didn't, and continue the process. No course is ever perfect, and good instructors continually seek to improve their courses. One of the most important aspects of good course design is alignment. This car is cute, but when we talk about alignment in your course, we mean that everything in your course – the learning objectives that are in your syllabus, the instruction and activities, and the assessments like tests or projects – should all make sense together. Sometimes it's useful to think of your course as a sandwich, or even better, a hamburger. Your course learning objectives are the top piece of bread. The assessments, such as tests, papers, really anything you grade to measure the student's success, are the bottom of the bun. Each step of your course seeks to prepare your students to achieve the learning objectives and assess how well they do, so those give your class structure. But students need all that yummy middle stuff to get them there. You fortify their learning with instructional materials like textbooks, lectures, and maybe videos, and you give them as many hands-on activities to help reinforce the learning. You should have received a course document or syllabus from your program chair. In that course document are course learning objectives or outcomes, sometimes both. If the course you are teaching is transferable to another college, those learning objectives cannot be altered. Even if you do have some latitude, you probably won't be tampering with them in your first few semesters of teaching. As you design your course, you will want to make sure that your instructional materials,

Speaker 2: activities, and assessments align with the objectives and outcomes on the course document. Here is an example of how a history course might be aligned.

Speaker 1: Let's say that one of the course learning objectives for this history class is explain the cause, effect, and relevance of specific historical events and or periods within the broader historical context. Since it is a course-level objective, it is probable that it will be addressed across several units in the course. As this instructor is designing his course, he can already envision the cause, effect, and relevance of historical events being parts of Units 4, 5, and 7. For this demonstration, we will look at how he will align Unit 5, the Industrial Revolution, to the objective. First he lists his instructional strategies, reading, watching a video, a PowerPoint he is going to present. Active learning is important for helping students absorb information, so he includes some homework and advises the students to be prepared for class discussion.

Speaker 2: He also has some small group work planned for in-class time.

Speaker 1: Finally, he makes sure his assessments will align with the objective. Going back to the objective, notice there is an important verb. It begins with the word explain. In order to see if the students have reached that objective, he has designed assessments that have them explain the necessary information by having them do short answers and answer an essay question. A well-designed course will have instructional materials and activities to prepare them to succeed and meet the objectives and be able to show that they have met those objectives when doing the assessment. This is what we mean by alignment.