COURSE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS and RESPONSIBILITIES
Course content is a core responsibility of program faculty and college leadership. The course building team is instructed only to copy and paste from Course Guides and implement settings as directed by the Course Guide. The build team does not write any content that appears in the course. Occasionally, the course building team might assist the faculty team with recommended Course Guide changes that address grammar, assignment clarity, accessibility, and alignment.
Program faculty work within their curriculum committee or smaller teams to create, review, update or edit a course in the Course Guide. The program faculty, if approved by the program leadership, may also work with a hired SME. The processes for approvals for course content are within the purview of the academic leadership of each program. The Course Guide contains an area where revision and approval action dates can be tracked.
As the Course Guide is being developed, the Program Director will assist with questions about online best practices and strategies and clarify and expand on the Curriculum Manual content. Once approved by the Program Director, the Course Guide is assigned to a course builder to build the content in the Master course shell. If requested by the Program Director or college leadership, the Instructional Designers will also do a QA review of the Course Build before notifying the appropriate office that the course is ready for faculty and students.
High Level Details (Section 1)
The Course Guide template's first section serves as the high-level overview of the course. It may contain catalog information, course developer/program lead information, a link to the active master shell, the course's PLOs and CLOs (aligned to the PLOs), textbook information, and a credit hour calculation tool (links to the curriculum manual and the course spreadsheet for calculating seat-time). Aside from a few pieces that are copied into the student-facing syllabus, this section is mostly important to the program curriculum committee and any reviewers.
Faculty/SME Notes for This Section:
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Catalog information may not be revised without the program lead faculty and/or program curriculum committee's participation. Once any change is made, it must be submitted to the registrar through the catalog review process, including a series of departmental approvals. The Catalog is published once a year (Early August) with three planned addenda (Winter and Spring). Please plan accordingly.
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Course Type/Style: use common descriptors such as lecture, lab, etc.
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Credit Hour Assignment: complete your credit-hour calculation spreadsheet for the course by entering some common parameters. If an assignment or activity does not fit an included category, work with your program lead faculty.
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Learning Outcomes: as every program is guided by its PLOs, so every course should be guided by its CLOs. In this section, the PLOs should be listed. In the next cell, list the CLOs with their alignment to at least one PLO. (click link for format/style example).
Course Learning Outcomes
When writing the CLOs, keep Bloom's Taxonomy in mind. Like the PLOs, your CLOs should articulate the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and habits of mind that students have and take with them when they successfully complete the course. As you write them, consider:
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Level: Is the main verb appropriate to the course level (undergrad/grad, I, D, or M on the curriculum map, placement in a sub-sequence of courses, etc.
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Directness/Clarity: Is the CLO clear and easy to understand? Check also for multiple clauses or qualifiers that may make the CLO too specific
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Measurability: Can a student's achievement of the CLO be demonstrated (and measured) through student work?
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Non-Compound: Does the CLO address just ONE thing? If the CLO has two verbs, see whether it can be reduced to one (usually the second).
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Non-Assignment: If the CLO sounds like instructions for an assignment in the course, it may not be an appropriate CLO. Think: will the student do this after and outside the course? (hint: "write a five-page paper on topic X" is not usually CLO-ready). Revise into a more general skill.
Textbooks & Instructions Material
Enter your textbook information in APA style (this will be copied in multiple places, so model the expected format for your students). Also include the ISBN number for the Student Information System.
Textbook Process:
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Program Approvals: After approval from your Program Lead Faculty, your program might include a formal vote in the curriculum committee (check with your program lead). Note any approvals with dates in the textbook cell in the Course Guide.
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Faculty Support will input the textbook information into the Student Information System (SIS) before a new course goes lives. This will allow students to see the textbook(s) for the course when they check their course list in their Student Portal. To start this process, email facultysupport@usuniversity.edu and include the course code, title, and textbook information.
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New vs. Updating Textbook Information: new course builds may have textbook information added to the SIS at any time, as appropriate. Otherwise, programs are asked to update their textbook lists annually to minimize student and advisor confusion.
Grading, Assessment, and Evaluation Tables (Section 2)
A second section may include the Grading Category Breakdown (assignments, points, weights, etc.) This section may also include a high-level outline or overview of the entire course.
Weekly Content Section (Section 3)
The Course Guide's remainder is dedicated to the weekly content.
Weekly Content
The last, and largest, portion of the Course Guide is dedicated to the weekly content. This section will include details such as lectures, overviews, readings, discussion questions, quizzes, and assignments.
In creating these pieces, faculty should consider them as direct communication with the students and, as such, opportunities for engagement. Imagine yourself in a physical classroom: the items you are designing below are both your handouts and the words you would say as you pass those handouts out to your students; they are the formal quiz instructions and the advice you would give to students when they ask how to prepare for it; they are all the assignments that go in the syllabus, but also the how they connect week by week and within the week - how you would talk about them if you were introducing your topics for the week as you began a class session. This is where you are designing your asynchronous only environment. We want to avoid the equivalent of just handing out the assignments without a word and walking away.
Each week has a bolder header that identifies the week. Be sure to create a weekly title to help the students understand the larger concepts or topics for that week.
Each week should include a lecture, reading, or review of specific indicated materials, an overview of the week, and the learning activities for that week. Each learning activity should have clear alignment to CLOs, point values, and due dates.