Planning Ideas

Course Design & Planning

What is Course Design?

This page will get you thinking about the design of your course and introduce you to techniques that will help you to design your course more effectively.

Ask yourself…

  • Do you have a “game plan” for the delivery of your 45, 60, 75, 90-hour course?
  • Do your students know what knowledge and skills will be in your course and how the course will unfold (progress)?
  • Does the end of your course build on the middle of your course, which builds on the start of your course?
  • What is the best place to start your course? Do you have enough time to get through your course?
  • Are the learning outcomes/objectives of your course clearly defined? Are your course’s instructional strategies (learning activities) and assessment tasks (assignments, projects, case studies, presentations, quizzes, exams…) aligned (matched) with the learning outcomes?
  • Do you have all the resources (books, handouts, PowerPoint slides, IT) you will need to deliver your course?
  • Have you heard of the ADDIE model for course design and do you know what reverse (backward) designing is?

Course design is basically your plan for the course. This is mainly done before the course starts, but keep in mind there is always a need adapt your plan as the course gets going.

Benefits & Purpose

The Benefits of Using Effective Course Design Principles

Allows you to… 

  • Clearly identify the key knowledge and skills from your course: You can focus on the important things
  • Identify the key knowledge and skills that you will assess and plan when each assessment will take place
  • Present knowledge and skills in the most logical way: the end of the course builds on the middle of the course, which builds on the start of the course
  • Match (align) all elements of your course (learning outcomes, instructional strategies, resources, assessment tasks, your students, the students’ professional goals) with the knowledge and skills of your course
  • Identify, collect and develop all the resources that you will need for the delivery of your course: activities, handouts/information sheets, books, assessment tasks, PowerPoint slides, IT needs
  • Plan the pace of your course and adapt the pace during the course
  • Reduce our stress levels: we have a plan, we have the resources, we know the timing, so we can relax more in the classroom
  • Communicate to students our expertise as discipline specialists and as teachers: students are much more likely to trust teachers who communicate that they know what they are doing and where the course is going. This promotes a professional and enjoyable classroom atmosphere which is focussed on student learning
  • Make the creation of course outlines easier
  • Refine and improve our courses as we teach them for the 2nd, 3rd…10th time. The more we teach a course, the less preparation we have to do and also the better the students’ learning will be

The Purpose of Applying Effective Course Design Principles

Simply, it is to organize all the resources, learning activities, timing and assessment tasks so that the students’ learning of the knowledge and skills of the course is as effective as possible.

A more sophisticated answer to this question is that it is the starting point for any course. The success of any course with regards to promoting meaningful student learning is done during the course design. Course design ensures that instructional strategies and assessment tasks are aligned with the general and specific learning objectives of the course and the knowledge type and cognitive demands of the learning objectives. Course design should be based on sound pedagogical principles incorporating and interweaving elements of course design, educational psychology, social constructivism, cognitive theory, developmental psychology, and assessment and feedback practices which promote learning. This demands teachers with a sound understanding of general, content and pedagogical content knowledge married with an in depth knowledge of the needs and goals of the students.

This does sound a bit complicated, but this page will introduce you to the steps needed to effectively design your courses.

Let’s Talk about the ADDIE Course Design Model

There are different course design models you can use to help you design a course. The model we will use on this page is called ADDIE. We have included other models for comparison in the Extend Your Learning section at the bottom of this page: They are very similar to ADDIE.

So, what does ADDIE stand for?
Analysis – Design – Development – Implement – Evaluate

Basically, analysis, design and development happen before you start your course and implementation is the teaching of your course. Evaluation happens at every stage: during the planning, while you are teaching your course and after the course is finished.

An introduction to the 5 stages of ADDIE, please watch this video.

Watch this video to review the tasks for the analysis stage of course design.

Watch this video to review the tasks for the design stage of course design.

Watch this video to review the tasks for the development stage of course design.

Watch this video to review the tasks for the implementation stage of course design.

Watch this video to review the tasks for the evaluation stage of course design.

ADDIE is a model to help you design, resource and deliver your courses more effectively. It also stresses the importance of analyzing and evaluating your courses so that you can continue to make them better and better: we should want to do this to make the quality of our students learning better and better.

To learn more check out: The ADDIE Model (PDF)

Don’t Forget Universal Design Principles

What is Universal Design?

Universal Design, which is also referred to as Inclusive Design, is the process whereby the set up, design and implementation of a classroom experience is made as accessible as possible to the diverse learning communities typically found in classroom settings.

Universal Design is an approach to pedagogy that consists of implementing “a proactive design and use of inclusive instructional strategies that benefit a broad range of learners, including students with disabilities”. (Scott, McGuire, & Embry, 2002).

To learn more about Universal Design check out… 

Extend Your Learning

There are two other instructional design models: Kemp and Fink’s Models check them out.

This presentation was created as a group project for an online course at UTB. I used PowerPoint, Prezi and Camtasia to produce it.