Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Course and Syllabus Design, Planning Your Course from Goals and Objectives to Outline and Schedule, a presentation by Sloan C. Think of it as an opportunity. Whether you're designing a new course or revising a course, working through the steps in this presentation will help you improve the quality of your online or blended course. To start your design process, you will first want to consider issues of quality. Your university, college, or department may already have defined quality metrics that you need to take into account. Additionally, you will want to review the quality rubrics or frameworks developed by various organizations and based on research. Next, you will write out the purpose and goals for the course. These may already be partially defined by your university via the course catalog. However, you may have some broad latitude. In any case, you will want to consider who your students are and what they need as part of the process. Once you have your course goals, you can start writing your course level objectives. These objectives, or statements of what the student will know or be able to do, should be written as higher order objectives such as Analyze, Synthesize, Evaluate, and Create. Once you have your higher order course level objectives written, you can begin developing objectives for units or modules and individual lessons. The objectives at this level will help the students achieve the higher order course level objectives. Deciding how to organize those objectives, that is, deciding the structure and sequence of the objectives, is the next step. Your content and pedagogical knowledge will be extremely important here because it is at this point that you are starting to determine how much time things may take. Once you've gotten an idea of the structure and sequence, you can begin creating your course schedule. For the record, design is a messy, chaotic process. It isn't as linear as I've made it seem in these last two slides. You'll find yourself jumping back and forth between steps as you try to come up with the perfect design. Identifying issues of quality is our first step. Understanding the elements of a quality course and knowing what a quality course looks like before you do any other design work gives you significant guidance for your design. Of course, you should definitely find out what type of quality guidelines your university, college, or department has in place. There may be certain things they want included in every course as part of their quest for quality. Beyond that, you should take a look at the Sloan C5 Pillars of Quality, the Quality Matters Rubric, and Chico's Rubric for Online Instruction since these three really cover all the bases. Let's take a look at some quality indicators in each rubric or framework to see how they can guide your course design process. First, there's the Student Satisfaction criteria in the Sloan C5 Pillars framework. In that criteria, it states that the goal is to make sure objectives match student expectations. The best way to do this is to make sure that your course goals and objectives accurately reflect what the students will be doing. This starts from the moment students read the course description prior to registering for the course. So, that suggests that you should be familiar with that course description as you're designing your course goals and objectives. Next, we have the Quality Matters Rubric and its Course Overview and Introduction standard. One of the criteria there is that students are introduced to the purpose and structure of the course. This can be accomplished in a number of ways. A description in the syllabus, for example. But the key point is to make sure that they, the students, are told what to expect. Finally, we have Chico's Rubric for Online Instruction. Their Instructional Design and Delivery standard has a criteria that states that course goals should be clearly defined and aligned with learning objectives. So, of course, you'll want to pay attention to that as you're designing your course. The important point for this step is that you familiarize yourself with the quality frameworks because their criteria and standards will guide you toward a quality course design. Once you've considered quality metrics, it is time to establish your course goals. The statements of what the course will do for your students. These goals will help shape the rest of your design, so you'll want to be precise. To establish your course goals, you need to identify what the gap is between the current state and the desired state of your students' knowledge and experience. To understand the current state, you need to know your students' knowledge, skills, and expectations. Additionally, knowing how prior students have done in the course, if it has been taught before, and what role that course plays in your students' professional futures are key bits of information about the current state. Other information relevant to the current state includes course description, as written in the course catalog, and what role the course plays in any degree or certificate program. The desired state is all about what should be. In other words, what should your students know or be able to do, and what should the course provide your students so they can be successful, either in follow-up courses, or the degree or certificate program, or in their careers? Your course goals should address the gap between what is and what should be. Typically, course goal statements take the form of, this course will prepare you to … or this course will provide you with … or even, in this course, you will learn about … You've established some course goals, and now it is time for Step 3, Defining Learning Objectives. Basically, you're asking, what should my students know or be able to do upon completion of this course? What is a learning objective? A learning objective is a statement of what your students will know or be able to do upon completion of the course. More importantly, it is a statement that describes a behavior that can be measured and assessed. A fully developed learning objective is a statement that includes the behavior, a condition under which the behavior will take place, and criteria by which the behavior will be assessed. Of course, in most university courses, faculty tend toward a more shorthand version of the learning objective that simply states the behavior to be demonstrated. I personally find it easier to write out a fully developed learning objective because it helps me with my course design. However, the shorthand version is acceptable, especially in the early stages of the course and syllabus design process. Behavior statements come from Bloom's Taxonomy. There are three taxonomies, one for the cognitive domain, one for the affective domain, and one for the psychomotor domain, and they are systems for classifying levels of learning in each domain. Bloom's Taxonomy is based on the premise that there are levels of learning. In the case of the cognitive domain, those levels begin with Remembering and move up through Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. For each level of learning in the taxonomy, there are verbs that describe learning behaviors for that level. So, for example, at the Knowledge or Remember level, students could define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, or reproduce some piece of knowledge. The verbs, not all of which are listed here, form the basis for the learning objective statement. Please note, the taxonomy is not meant to suggest that you must start from the bottom in terms of the type of learning objectives and corresponding learning activities that you design. It is simply meant to indicate that in order for students to, for example, apply some bit of knowledge, they must first know and understand that bit of information. You could, for example, do a problem-based learning design in which students have the objective of creating something and, in the process of solving the problem to create that something, they discover the facts, develop the understanding, apply the knowledge, and analyze and evaluate the information. The key thing, from a design perspective, is that you become fully aware of how learning builds on itself and how much time it can take for that to happen. So, how will you define your learning objectives? One method is to start with the course-level objectives and aim for those higher-order learning behaviors like create, evaluate, and analyze. Then, move on to the unit, module, or lesson objectives that will be written at the lower level of Bloom's taxonomy that, when completed, will help the learner achieve those higher-order course objectives. For example, you might have the course objective of create a quality online course and then, in your unit, module, or lesson, address each little aspect of an online course that students will have to know or be able to do to create that online course, such as identify three different quality frameworks, explain the critical elements of an online course, analyze the components of an effective online syllabus, and so on. Another method, especially if you lean more toward constructivist pedagogies, is to have your course and unit objectives all be higher-order objectives. For example, you may start with a course-level objective of create a quality online course and then move into units where the objectives address things like create a learner-centered syllabus and create learner-centered activities or assessments, and so on. It isn't that your students won't end up also being able to explain critical elements of an online course. It is just that they'll learn those things as they explore how to create the syllabus, activities, and assessments. A special note for those of you who prefer that second method. You're still going to need to have a really good idea of those lower-level objectives so you'll be able to assess the products of the student creations appropriately. You've identified quality metrics, established course goals, and defined your objectives. Now, it's time to create your course outline. In this step, you're concerned with some of the big-picture course sequence and structure questions, like what will your students learn first and what sorts of learning activities and assessments may help them achieve those objectives. To make creating your course outline easier, it is often a good idea to organize your ideas in a table to get down the general scope of the course. In this example table, we have columns for learning objectives, possible assessments, possible learning activities, and approximate amount of time that might be required to achieve the objective. So, for example, you might have a learning objective of identify three quality frameworks for online courses. To demonstrate they can do that, you might have the students take a quiz or write a discussion post or even write an essay. To prepare them to do that, you might ask them to read about the three frameworks or watch a presentation about them. Then, depending on which activity and which assessment strategy you choose, you'll have to decide about how much time this should take to complete. By listing out your objectives, assessments, activities, and approximate time, you're well on your way to a good course outline. Of course, to really get a handle on the whole sequence and structure of the course for your outline, you'll have to take your table of objectives, activities, and so on one step further. You're going to have to decide how you will organize those objectives into weeks or units or whatever your preferred structure happens to be. Whether you do it by week or by unit, you'll want to identify which objectives will be addressed in each. Once you have this basic structure and sequence, you're ready to complete your schedule. You've identified quality metrics, established course goals, defined your objectives, and created a course outline. Now, it's time to establish a schedule. In this step, you'll be deciding what gets taught each day or week by taking into consideration many different factors. As you begin to establish the course schedule, you'll want to make sure that you have a clear plan. As you begin to establish the course schedule, it is important that you consider the university calendar and your own professional and personal obligations in addition to the structure and sequence of your course that you set in the previous step. A good first step is to note on the course schedule any breaks, holidays, exam periods, and other university-set calendar events that could impact your course schedule. Once you've done that, note your own personal and professional obligations on the schedule. These could include conferences, events in your other courses, and so on. Finally, once you've identified those things, you're ready to begin plotting out what you will be teaching each day or week of the course. Other things you should consider as you're developing your schedule include synchronous and asynchronous work, special events, and assignment start and due dates. In many online classes, students may be meeting in the physical classroom as well as online, or the course may have both online synchronous and asynchronous work. It is important that your schedule note not only dates and times, but also locations for these things. Additionally, there might be special events happening at the university or locally that are relevant to your course that you may want to include. For example, the university may be sponsoring a guest lecture that pertains to your course. You'll definitely want to add these things to the schedule so your students have plenty of time to plan the course schedule around their own personal schedules. Finally, in online courses, assignments are often assigned in one week but due the next week or several weeks later. You should consider noting on the schedule when an assignment begins, any milestones relevant to that assignment, and the due dates. This will really help your students plan and prepare. You want to avoid putting assignment due dates only because by the time the student sees the due date in the schedule, it will probably be too late to actually work on the assignment. The example schedule on the left is a template I will often use to help me organize my schedule. I typically like to include dates, objectives, synchronous events, and assignments in my schedule. The example on the right shows the template in action. I like to use the date column to note any special university deadlines, such as course withdrawals, holidays, and so on. I also try to be quite clear on the schedule about days and times and locations of synchronous events, and whether an assignment listed is the start date of the assignment or the due date, and whether it is extra credit or optional or not. The most important part is that you create your schedule in a way that conveys all the information necessary and does so in an organized and easy-to-follow fashion. In review, the steps for course design begin with looking at quality course standards and criteria because this will help guide your course design. From there, you will establish some course goals that tell your students what the course will do for them. Using your course goals, you'll write some learning objectives that tell the students what they will be expected to know or be able to do by the time they complete the course. Once you have the objectives written, you can begin to outline the structure and sequence of your course and put together a schedule. Follow those basic steps and you'll be on your way to designing a quality online course. Thank you. May all of your course design endeavors be successful and may you enjoy the process.