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Teaching@UW

Getting started with course design

Students are more likely to be engaged and learn when you intentionally design your course around clear learning goals or outcomes. The strategies and guidance below can get you started on developing your course and syllabus through a process referred to as “alignment.”

What does it mean to “align” your course?

A course is aligned when all the elements of the course are working together toward a clearly defined goal or set of goals. One way to understand alignment is to think about a car. A car is a complex machine with thousands of parts and multiple core systems. Those parts have to work together and must ultimately serve the primary goal of a car, which is to transport people. If a car’s systems don’t work together or if there are unnecessary parts in a car, it can hinder the car’s performance.

So alignment is about ensuring that your assignments, activities, assessments, and course materials all “align” to your goal(s).

Backward or reverse course design

The process of designing an aligned course starts with the goals in mind and works back from there. This approach of working backward from learning goals/outcomes is often referred to as “backward” or “reverse” course design.

Instead of starting with a list of topics you need to cover in your course, the alignment process begins by asking the following questions before you start mapping out your course:

  • Who are my students? Are they majors or non-majors? New to the discipline? Explore UW datasets to learn more about your students.
  • Where do I want my students to end up? What knowledge or skills should they leave with?
  • How will I know if my students get there? What evidence will convince me that they have the knowledge and skills I want them to have?
  • What can I do to get them there? What types of activities and content can I develop to help them build knowledge and skills?

Developing measurable learning outcomes or objectives

Learning outcomes are core to the concept of alignment. A learning outcome is a simple, concise statement that tells students what they should be able to do as a result of working through your course. Developing measurable learning outcomes can help instructors and programs determine if learners are achieving the goals we’ve set for them.

How can you tell if your learning outcomes are “measurable”? Consider the following sample learning outcome:

“Learners will understand the difference between X and Y.”

How will you know whether learners “understand” the difference between X and Y? To get a sense of whether learners “understand” something, you need to observe them doing something else, such as correctly identifying or articulating something or performing some action. Eliminate vague verbs like understand, know, learn, realize, and appreciate from our learning outcomes and replace them with verbs that describe the actions your learners will take to demonstrate their understanding. Here’s a measurable version of our sample learning outcome:

“Learners will be able to differentiate X from Y.”

One benefit of measurable learning outcomes is that they can point toward potential assessment methods that align with the outcome. Using the sample above, an instructor could develop a quiz question that asks learners to match the terms X and Y with the correct examples or definitions. Or we could assign a short essay that asks learners to explain how X and Y differ.

Here are some tools that can assist you in developing learning outcomes:

Aligning your assignments, assessments, and activities

Learning outcomes are destinations. Assignments and activities help students journey toward those destinations. Assessments help you understand how the journey went for students. Your assignments and activities should incrementally move your students toward your learning outcomes.

Scaffolding your assignments

Even in introductory courses, the concepts and processes in our disciplines are complex and nuanced. Because we’ve been deep in our disciplines for so long, we can sometimes suffer from “expert blindness.” This can cause us to unconsciously overlook the component skills and knowledge we use to engage in nuanced thinking or tackle complex problems.

For students to learn, we need to break down that complexity and develop smaller assignments that help build knowledge and skills. This is a concept known as scaffolding.

Consider this example learning outcome: Students will be able to develop an argument based on scholarly sources.

This outcome asks a lot of students. It requires them to understand the nature of source material and to know the components and processes involved in constructing an argument based on evidence. It is unlikely that students would succeed if we just handed them this assignment on the first day. Instead, we can help them succeed by developing smaller, scaffolded assignments and/or activities that focus on the development of the discrete skills they’ll need to tackle the larger task. These smaller assignments or class activities might include having students:

  • Compare and contrast a scholarly and non-scholarly source
  • Use library databases to find scholarly sources on a topic
  • Annotate a scholarly source
  • Practice writing a thesis statement

Assessing for outcomes

Just as your assignments and activities build from your learning outcomes, your assessments should be designed to measure students’ grasp of the knowledge and skills associated with your learning outcomes. Assessments can take many different forms. Learn more about creating assessments.

Aligning your use of technology

Learning technologies offer instructors additional opportunities to create dynamic, relevant learning experiences, share information, and structure interaction for students in in-person, hybrid, and online courses. But technology, in and of itself, cannot foster learning. The technologies you adopt need to support your larger vision and align with your learning outcomes.

Here are some questions to guide your decision making when it comes to integrating technology into your course:

  • What are my learning goals? The best technology is useless if it isn’t connected to a clear instructional purpose.
  • Does the technology add value? Loading up your class with lots of new technologies might seem like a good idea, but asking students to devote brainpower to learning new technologies every week may reduce the amount of brainpower they can devote to course concepts. Avoid choosing a complex technology where a simpler one will do and think carefully about how many new technologies you introduce in your course.
  • Is the technology supported by the UW? Many technologies on the web are advertised as “free.” That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to use them. Free software often carries hidden (non-monetary) costs, usually involving the appropriation of student data. The UW carefully vets its technology vendors to ensure that they follow privacy and security best practices. When choosing technology, first explore the learning technologies supported by the UW and/or connect with the learning technology support staff on your campus.

Where to get teaching technology support

Creating your syllabus

A syllabus provides the instructor and students with a common reference point that sets the stage for learning throughout the course. Get guidance on how to create a syllabus.