My Course Development & Planning Process

I use a Backwards Course Design approach, which starts by thinking about what I want students to know and be able to do at the end of the course, then building lesson plans and assessments that help students reach those outcomes.

I walk through an example of this process with a course I designed in the Graduate Certificate for College Teaching. BIOL 300- Human Dimensions of Natural Resources is an upper division undergraduate course that explores how to integrate the study of human behavior with natural resource management. The course covers theoretical approaches used to incorporate humans into discussions and studies of ecology, including anthropological, economic, social psychological, biological, normative, and behavioral. We also discuss applications of these approaches in natural resource management, such as outdoor recreation, tourism, and wildlife conservation. The aim of the course is to prepare students for careers in natural resource management and research, while emphasizing collaboration, communication, and considering multiple perspectives when approaching a problem.

Situational Factors

As I start to design a course, I consider the situational factors that might affect students' prior knowledge, the classroom environment, department or university expectations for the course, and my teaching.

Some examples of situational factors from the example course would be:

This will be an upper division course, so students coming into the course will have previous exposure to biological coursework. This makes it important to consider the background knowledge that students should have when entering the course, so I can make connections to their prior knowledge and build upon it.
This will be a relatively small class (~20 students) taught in person twice a week.
The hypothetical biology department where this course would be taught would expect students to get an overview of human dimensions and prepare students to solve problems with interdisciplinary approaches.
This field is divergent and will require students to make connections between a variety of ideas in multiple fields, including Ecology, Anthropology, Social Science, Economics, and Ecology.
This is an upper division course, so I expect students to have some opinions already. Because I am situating this course in a biology department, I will need to be particularly aware of students who have any preconceived notions of social science being a “soft” or imprecise science.
I will need to be aware of my experiences as an instructor, which are limited to a lab setting before this course. I should pay attention to how I will need to adjust my teaching in this new setting.

Course Learning Outcomes

My next step is to write a set of course learning outcomes (LOs) that I want students to accomplish by the end of the semester. I use Bloom's Taxonomy to write my learning outcomes and work to identify outcomes at a variety of levels of the taxonomy.

Examples:

LO1: Explain the importance of considering human behavior and needs when making natural resource management decisions or conducting research on natural resources. Bloom's Level: Understand

LO 2: Compare and contrast approaches (anthropological, economic, social psychological, biological, normative, and behavioral) to studying human-nature relationships. Bloom's Level: Analyze

LO 3: Evaluate a management plan using multiple approaches and perspectives. Bloom's Level: Evaluate

LO 4: Justify their natural resource management decisions using scientific evidence. Bloom's Level: Evaluate

LO 5: Apply a methodology from one of the theoretical approaches to a natural resource management problem. Bloom's Level: Apply

LO 6: Design a plan to address human and ecological needs in a unique natural resource management scenario. Bloom's Level: Create

Once I have my course learning outcomes, I plan the summative assessments that I will use to test each outcome, how to break the outcome into smaller scaffolding steps that can be addressed in 1-2 class periods, and formative assessments and activities to use in class periods focused the learning outcome. I work to make sure that there is alignment between the course learning outcomes and the course materials throughout the semester.

I organize this into a course design table (example), then the course syllabus (example).

Planning a Class Session

I use a similar process when planning a class session. I start with the class learning outcomes, which come from the scaffolded course learning outcomes. I also consider:

How the lesson fits with past and future course content
How I will assess the class LOs using formative assessments during the class period
How I can use inclusive teaching and Universal Design for Learning practices

Next, I plan out the class timeline by activity and note which class LO each activity is related to, the method and format of the activity, and any materials needed. This helps to ensure that the class activities are aligned with the class learning outcomes.

Example Lesson Plan