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Course Design

Course design is focused on setting your students up for success and providing a quality learning experience.

This means designing learning in ways that give students transparency and clarity about your expectations of their learning, and their performance through assessment. It begins with Backwards Design, considering learning goals first and moving on to aligning assessments and activities with those goals.

Course Design and Development

Backward Design

As with all quality course development, start by using the backward design model (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005) when designing or redesigning your course. In the backward design process, you structure student learning based on assessments that are intentionally designed to provide evidence that students have achieved the course goals.

The first step in backward course design is to clearly articulate the final results of the course. Begin by asking yourself

What do I want my students to be able to think and do by the end of the course?
How will my students be different by the end of the course?
What are the course Goals (aligned with program goals)?
What are the unit Objectives (aligned with course goals)?

Goals & Objectives

Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is organized into six categories, lists a variety of verbs to represent the action expected of thinking and doing. Bloom’s Taxonomy can be used to develop goals and objectives for the course. Goals are broad, generalized statements about what if to be learned in the course. Objectives, designed to be included in weekly units, should be more specific. Include, only, one action verb in each objective. Objectives are S.M.A.R.T.:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

Assessments

After creating course goals and unit objectives the next step in designing your course is to think about and plan what evidence will the students provide to show they have achieved the final goals for the course and the progressive unit objectives. Once you identify these different types of evidence, it is time to start planning the communication, activities, assignments, and course content that will be aligned to meet unit objectives and final course goals.

The following Course Design Worksheet is a word document that can be used to develop your course before adding it to the Learning Management System (Blackboard). The worksheet is used as a storyboard, outlining the flow of your course.

Course Design Worksheet

The worksheet is immensely helpful for starting to think about the flow and organization of your content and how this aligns with your learning objectives, outcomes, and assessment. Download the Course Design Worksheet to begin designing your course. Download the Course Design Worksheet to begin designing your course.

NDSU Exemplar Course Design Rubric

To ensure the quality of courses and course design, use the Exemplar Course Design Rubric. This rubric is grounded in research and scholarship and articulates the indicators and standards of quality. The rubric can be used to guide the development of new courses or review existing courses, and to recommend where improvements are most impactful. Download the NDSU exemplar course design rubric.

Course Checklist

The Course Checklist is a final check, before making the course available to ensure you have the key components of your course ready for students. Download the Course Checklist before activating your course.

Simple Course Design - Blackboard Layout

The Blackboard course layout should be easy to navigate and understand. A major complaint from students is that they spend too much time searching to find the information, tools, and resources they need to succeed. We recommend using a defined navigation pathway following a unit or weekly Module design. That way, when students see a familiar layout at a high level, they can find the rest of the content for the week without guessing where things are located.

When considering your content design at a high level, it is helpful to think about how content is chunked into manageable segments with Modules titled units or weeks. Each Module will include all of the information, content, and activities the students will need to succeed. All course materials, assignments, activities, and assessments are aligned with the lesson objectives and course goals. They are included in each Module to provide focus and context for students.

Sample Module: Week or Unit: