Aligned Course Design Research and Resources

Research

Biggs, John and Tang, Catherine. Teaching for Quality Learning at University (4th ed). Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, 2011. (First edition: 1999.)

Fink, L. Dee. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

Wlodkowski, Raymond. J. & Ginsberg, Margery. B. Diversity and Motivation: Culturally Responsive Teaching. (2nd ed). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Wiggins, Grant P., and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA : Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005. (First edition: 1998.)

Resources

• Academic Integrity Resources for Instructors
• The 4A’s of Course Design – overview video and full transcript
• “Why Backward is Best,” short article by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
• UDL On Campus. “Course Design.”

Atmosphere

• An Atmosphere-specific video that suggests attending to atmosphere through development of personal, social, and instructional roles and responsibilities
• “Mistakes Happen” conversation with Ken Leopold, UMTC Distinguished Teaching Professor, Chemistry, focusing on respect in creating classroom climates for learning
• “Mistakes Happen” conversation with Bob Poch, UMTC Distinguished Teaching Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, focusing on planning for making student-student, student-content, and student-teacher connections  
• “Atmosphere: Learning Context Factors to Consider,” a reflective planning document with springboard questions for assessing community, institutional, disciplinary, teacher and student contexts that can impact course design
• “Creating Community in the Classroom," a guide for instructors that focuses on inclusion and accessibility
• “Start Small, Start Now” to learn the 6 skills that provide a foundation for creating accessible, usable digital course materials and resources

Aims

• An Aims video providing an overview of three levels of aims: ultimate (course level), mediating (assignment/exam level), and foundational (preparing for and in class activities).
• Examples of learning-centered aims
• Nilson’s “Outcomes-Centered Course Design” in Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors (John Wiley & Sons, 2016) has further discussion of aims aware—or outcomes-centered—course design.
• A UMN folder of 3 aims-writing resources linked to Bloom’s and Fink’s learning taxonomy
• The Science Education Resource Center provides—whatever your discipline—an excellent resource guide for filtering content during course design.

Activities

• “Backward Design - Sequencing Activities, Assignments, Assessments” provides guidelines for drafting a course calendar.
• Consult the Classroom Patterns resource to begin developing two to three class session plans that could provide a foundation for face-to-face class sessions and online module organization.
• From Homework to Learning Work – slides with talking points and resources addressing ways to create “preparing for class” activities
• Classroom Assessment Techniques – a matrix with descriptions of CATs and ideas for their use in sparking and assessing students’ learning
• Types of Lectures – a focused listing that categorized lectures in terms of the level of student interaction, the classification of content, and the medium by which information is disseminated.
• “Getting Lecturers to Take Discussions Seriously,” an article by Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill featured in To Improve the Academy (2000): 232-253. UMTC instructors can access this through the Wiley Online Library Database.
• A Faculty Guide to Team Projects – a webpage for instructors who are 1) thinking about incorporating a team project into a course you teach, 2) revising past team or approaches to team projects, or 3) interested in addressing challenges your students have identified as part of learning to successfully navigate and complete cooperative and/or collaborative projects, whatever the course level.

Assessment

• Video overviews describing characteristics, examples, and tools that support Educative Assessment, Formative Feedback, and Summative Evaluation
• Assessment Alignment and Planning Worksheet, which provides springboard questions and an organizational scheme to guide instructor planning
• Alternative Assessment Strategies
• Writing High Level Learning Aims: Some Performance Verbs Focused on the Process of Learning
• Developing Formal Assessments of High Level Learning: Some Prompts for Generating “Non-Test” Alternative Assessments
• Conversation with Maria Gini, UMTC Distinguished Teaching Professor, Computer Science & Engineering, on re-thinking the role of exams in student learning