Helping Instructors Identify Course Design Flaws

Abstract

In numerous workshops and course design retreats, we have modeled the course design process using a fictional course (entitled “Colorado Mountain Hiking”) to help instructors bridge the gap between course design theory and practice. We have found this example to be effective because it: a) is accessible to colleagues of different disciplinary backgrounds, b) highlights the importance of each component of the course design and the alignment between them, and c) allows instructors to easily see the impact of common course design flaws so that they can diagnose similar flaws in their own courses. In this paper, we provide the details of this fictional course and outline how we have used it to help instructors identify common course design flaws.

Keywords:

• Course design;
• faculty development;
• alignment;
• assessment;
• learning outcomes

Notes

1 We understand that there are many such course design models and worksheets available; the example can be retrofitted into any of those that are more relevant for the reader.

2 Obviously, the list of objectives for an actual Colorado Mountain Hiking course would have to be more robust than the short list of four objectives listed here. For instance, students will also need to acquire and be able to use safety equipment and be able to carry it for the duration of the hike. We have limited the list of objectives in Figure 1 to four for the sake of brevity.