Course Design Resources

A learner-centered syllabus focuses on the learner and promotes academic success by anticipating questions and providing necessary information to advance the learner experience in a particular course. The syllabus sets the tone for a course, lets learners know what to expect, establishes a rationale, shares grading strategies, and provides learner support resources.

The Backward Design approach to curriculum development offers three stages that support alignment of learning outcomes.

1. Identify desired results. Describe what your learners should know, understand, and be able to do by the end of the course. Learning outcomes often target standards or goals established by the program. 
2. Determine acceptable evidence that validate and demonstrate achieved learning outcomes. Identify how you plan to assess learners on their knowledge and mastery of information, skills, and attitudes. Determine proficiency levels and the kind of evidence learners need to demonstrate at the different levels.
3. Plan learning experiences and instruction that give students the opportunity to gain an understanding, construct meaning from their knowledge, and place that knowledge into practice.
   
   

A course map is a visual overview of all components of a course, aimed to demonstrate how learning outcomes are supported by the overall learning experience. Course maps organize the structure of a course around its learning modules or learning units. Each unit is further broken down into its components: assessments, activities, instruction, and mapped or linked to the appropriate learning outcome to demonstrate alignment.

Digital Learning is a subscribing member of Quality Matters, which provides research-based rubrics and standards for ensuring quality and continuous improvement of online classes and programs. Review and evaluation is an iterative process that provides opportunity for identifying gaps and opportunities for advancing teaching and learning.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-based framework that takes a proactive approach to designing courses for students with various backgrounds and learning abilities. UDL centers around three principles for universal course design, aimed to meet the needs of various learners.

• Multiple means of Engagement: Give students the opportunity to engage and participate in activities that best motivate them.
• Multiple means of Representation: Provide alternative methods for reading, viewing, and listening to instructional material and course content. Ensure access to learning materials are universal.
• Multiple means of Expression: Allow choice, options, and flexibility for students to express how they learn and how they have achieved the learning goals.
  
  

Power Point slides and visual elements can be designed to enhance and support learning. Cognitive Learning Theory and Multimedia Learning principles tell us that spatial contiguity, segmenting, personalization, and imagery among other principles help students make connections in the learning content and support transfer of learning into memory.