Course and Curricular Design Resources

 

Working on your syllabus? Try these guides:

Planning out units in your course?  Use some of these resources:

  • 7 E's Template An Instructional Model Template (7 E’s) for unit or lesson planning.
  • The One Sentence Lesson Plan (Video based on OTEI workshop - 12:52) Learn how to focus your lessons with a one-sentence lesson plan. As faculty, we tend to focus too much on teaching and pack in too much content. The one-sentence lesson plan helps you focus on student learning by addressing three simple elements: the what, the how, and the why of your lesson. In Ensemble

Working on a departmental curriculum?

The following resource can help programs with curricular review through a Curriculum Mapping process.

External Resources:

A Quick Guide to the "Understanding by Design" Process. A primer on the backward design approach to course design. (Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching)

A Valid and Reliable Syllabus Rubric: Palmer, M. S., Bach, D. J., & Streifer, A. C. (2014). Measuring the promise: A learning‐focused syllabus rubric. To improve the academy: A journal of educational development, 33 (1), 14-36.

Clemson Library: 

Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses  [ebook] – by L. Dee Fink

Fink addresses research on how people learn; active learning; and how student engagement relates to student learning. This book provides conceptual and procedural tools for designing a course using a taxonomy of significant learning (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) and research-based best practices for learning-centered teaching. 

The Understanding by Design Guide to Advanced Concepts in Creating and Reviewing Units  [ebook] – by Grant P. Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2012)

This book addresses course design using a backwards design approach that is most effective for student learning.

How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures  [ebook] – by Committee on How People Learn II (2018)

This updated version of the 2000 report includes more recent research on how people learn throughout the lifespan and is a great resource for educators of both students and adults.