If you’ve found this resource, it’s likely because you have worked through the course design process. Congratulations! You have done a lot of work to get this far and have built the foundation for a successful, intentional, student-centered course. The guide below helps you move from where you are to where you’d want to be to be ready to teach the course. 

A review of the course design plan

As a reminder, the course design plan you’ve created includes the following: 

• An analysis of your situational factors 
• Strategies to create student-centered learning environments
• Course learning outcomes that are clear, attainable, learning-focused, measurable, and specific
• Summative assessments that align with course learning outcomes
• Scaffolding steps that support students in reaching the course learning outcomes
• Learning activities and formative assessments that allow students to engage with course content 

Putting your course design plan into action

The course design plan establishes the path your course will follow and is an essential first step. Here, we share how to expand each of those areas so that you end up with a course that’s ready to be taught. 

STEP 1: The situational factors have already informed your course design and should continue to inform the decisions you make going forward. For example: 

• The format for assignments will depend on the level and size of the course. 
• Students’ prior knowledge will continue to be something to keep in mind as you progress through the semester. 

STEP 2: For the strategies to create student-centered learning environments: 

• Some of the strategies you identified may end up in your syllabus as you communicate to students about the course structure and your approach to teaching.
• You may choose to start the semester with a welcome video, welcome letter, and/or student information survey. 
• The strategies you’ve chosen will point to the kinds of activities and assessments you incorporate. 
• Make yourself a reminder mid-semester to check in with your students about things that are going on in their lives and affecting them (e.g., current events).
• It will be helpful to revisit the list of ideas you’ve chosen as you move toward and through the semester so that you make sure you’re putting the ideas into practice.

STEP 3: The course learning outcomes should serve as the foundation for all choices you make, whether those are about what summative assessments to give, what content to include or exclude, and what you’ll do on a daily basis. 

STEP 4: For the summative assessments, you have a good plan for how to assess each course learning outcome and now you’ll need to: 

• Build out the guidelines for each assignment, following the transparent assignment framework where appropriate. As part of this, you’ll want to communicate to students how their work will be evaluated by including a rubric with your assignments. 
• Create a plan for how you’ll communicate with students about each of the assessments, both early in the semester so that they know what to expect and then in advance of each assignment to prepare them to engage in it. 
• Determine the order and timing of assessments. Some of the assessments might benefit from students first completing a draft, so include that in your timeline too. 
• Establish how much each assessment will contribute to the overall grade. It’s good practice to not make any one assignment worth too much of the grade. Additionally, assignments that come early in the semester should be worth less of the grade as students are still adjusting to the course.
• Develop a plan for how to provide learning-focused feedback to students. The feedback play may also include peer review and/or self-assessment.

STEP 5: The scaffolding plan – the scaffolding steps in combination with the aligned activities and assessments – will most significantly inform what you do in class day-to-day. 

• Review all of the scaffolding steps and think about the order in which students will do all of them. It’s unlikely that you’ll go through one entire LO at a time before moving onto the next, so these might need to be interwoven with one another. 
• The scaffolding steps, which were written as class LOs, then become the foundation for what you do in class each day. Even with an expansive set of scaffolding steps, it’s likely that you’ll need to add additional class LOs for each class session. Although it might feel like a lot of work, it’s a good habit to plan each class session around a set of learning outcomes so that you and your students are clear about what they should be getting out of the class session. This process also allows you to think about how each class session – and set of class LOs – fits with the course learning outcomes. 
• The learning activities and formative assessments you identified in alignment with each scaffolding step become the activities that you use in the class session where the scaffolding step is the class learning outcome.

What you still need to start the semester

Beyond the course design plan, there are some other steps you still need to take to have something ready to roll out in the classroom. In addition to the work you’ve already done, you’ll need to do the following things: 

STEP 6: Choose course materials: When choosing your course materials, do so with an eye toward accessibility and affordability. Additionally, you will want materials that align with the course content and learning outcomes you have identified. It is also helpful to include course materials which represent multiple voices and/or come from authors with different backgrounds. Finally, we encourage you to resist the temptation to build your course in a way that simply follows the order of chapters in the textbook. While this might work in some cases, it’s possible that some other order would better fit the course that you’ve been intentionally building. 

STEP 7: Develop the course schedule: It is helpful for you and the students to know what the schedule for the semester looks like up front – and this is something else you can communicate through the syllabus. This allows students to plan accordingly, for example, to set aside time in advance of major assignments and/or to do the weekly class work. In terms of making the schedule, you will want to determine: 

• Assignment due dates: Spread out the summative assessments, both for students and for yourself. You’ll want to consider when students have built enough skills to engage in each of your assignments.
• Order of class sessions: You will also need to identify the order of class sessions. It’s useful here to think about what makes the most sense with your course learning outcomes and with the scaffolding steps you have identified. Although it is tempting to set the order of topics based on the table of contents in a textbook, that’s not always the way that makes the most sense. 
• Class learning outcomes for each class session: Although it might seem like a huge task to write 3-4 class learning outcomes for each session (the things you want students to learn from that class), it is very helpful to do this so that you know what your goals are for each session and how these contribute to students achieving the course learning outcomes. 
• What students will do in between class sessions: While a lot of learning occurs in the classroom, the time in between classes can also be used meaningfully in support of learning, whether that is reading, watching a video, completing an assignment, writing a reflection, engaging in the community, etc. By intentionally planning how the “in between times” are used, we can help students connect one session to the other and come ready to engage and learn. 

STEP 8: Create your syllabus: The syllabus provides an opportunity to welcome students to the course and let them know what they can expect to learn from it. As you create the syllabus, you can also consider if your course policies offer some flexibility for students (e.g., with attendance, late work, grading). 

STEP 9: Start planning class sessions: Once you have built the schedule and identified class learning outcomes for each session, it’s time to start planning each class session in more detail. It will be helpful to have the first two (or even three) weeks planned ahead of time so that you feel more prepared and can start on the right foot. 

Final thoughts 

Here are a few final thoughts about the process of moving your course design plan from plan to reality. 

• The course you’ve built is unique to you and your students. By reflecting on your own approach to teaching and thoughtfully considering who your students are and where they come from, you have created something that should work for all of you. 
• Plan, but be flexible. One of the hallmarks of backward design is the intentionality of it. And while teaching is usually well-served by planning ahead, we have to remember that we sometimes might need to adjust mid-course. Perhaps there’s a topic that needs revisiting, an assessment that didn’t go as planned, events in the world that need addressing – in all of these cases, we may need to modify our plans to best support our students as learners and people. 
• Try new things and try again. As instructors, we build our teaching skills in the same way that students learn – we try things which sometimes work the first time and sometimes include mistakes. And just like for our students, it’s okay if things don’t work the first time. That provides an opportunity to reflect on the experience and try again (see Table 3 in this article by Kimberly Tanner). 
• Get feedback early and often. Once the course is underway, there are many opportunities to get feedback about it.
  • Seek feedback from students early and often. This could be a very informal check in, your own mid-semester survey, or a more structured mid-semester assessment conducted by the CTL. 
  • Sign up for a consultation and/or observation from the CTL.
  • As a peer to come and observe your course.

Good luck and have fun!