Are you in the middle of finalizing your course outlines (or syllabi, depending where you live) for the autumn term?
Whether you are planning a course from scratch or updating one you’ve delivered before, you need to get things organized by the end of this month.
Out of bureaucratic craziness can come some helpful tools
As you know, my academic career was in the UK. One of the frustrations of being an academic in the UK is the level of bureaucracy surrounding course planning.
Not only does the university administration consider your course outline (tr. syllabus) to be a contract with the students, but there is a national process for assessing the quality of teaching in higher education institutions that requires a lot of record keeping.
As awful as the term “learning objectives” is, thinking about what you want your students to learn can make all the other decisions about your course design a lot easier.
- Do you want them to learn a lot of facts about specific topics?
- Do you want all students to know the same facts? Or is it okay if some students have detailed knowledge of one sub-topic and others of another?
- Do you want them to learn some concepts or theory and then apply them to particular situations?
- Do you want them to learn specific research skills? For example, do you expect them to use a database to find academic journal articles, select appropriate articles, and use them?
- What do you want them to be able to do with the material you provide (in lectures, readings, etc.)?
Knowing what you want students to learn (and it’s probably a combination of things) enables you to figure out
- What content is essential, and what is optional;
- what types of activities might best help them learn these things
- how best to assess whether they have learned these things
The benefits for students
Whether you are required to do so or not, making your objectives clear to the students benefits them.
Students get a clear indication of what exactly is required. This is especially important if you have students that have a fact orientation and you have a concepts orientation.
Be transparent about the relationship between the assessment and the learning objectives. Sometimes bright students work really hard doing all the wrong things and then wonder why they got mediocre marks.
If you have an exam, the learning objectives provide a structure for their revision.
The benefits for you
The main benefit for you is that it makes decision making easier.
Many of those decisions are ones you are making now:
- what topics to cover
- what textbook to use (if any)
- what (other) readings to assign
- how to assess the students
You also have to make decisions as you deliver the course
- What do I need to prepare for tomorrow’s class?
- Do the students seem to be getting it? If not, what can I do to help them?
- How do I prepare students for this assessment? (either in class, or answering questions they ask in your office hours or by e-mail)
- What grade do I give this essay? It’s well written, and this student obviously did a lot of work, but it really misses the point.
- How do I explain this grade to this student? or to my colleagues?
Having clear objectives can save you time
You won’t waste time preparing material you didn’t need (or worse, material that just confused the students).
Your objectives will give you the confidence to stop preparing and move on to other tasks, without being distracted by worry that you haven’t prepared enough.
You will be able to mark papers more quickly while remaining confident that your marks are defensible because you are using clear criteria.
You will be able to engage positively with students who have questions (about content or grades) without being distracted by that gremlin that suggests that maybe you really were being arbitrary and unfair.
Need help?
Sometimes it is hard to articulate “learning objectives”.
These are, after all, things you learned ages ago and are now second nature (especially if you are teaching first or second year undergraduates).
Not only that but your training emphasized content knowledge and you might never have had learning objectives articulated to you before.
One of my superpowers is mind-reading.
I don’t really read minds but clients often think I do because I’m so good at listening to your rambling incoherent thoughts and drawing out objectives. I do it with grant proposals. I can do it with teaching plans.
If you think that would help, book a 1-hour coaching session.
Let me know that this is what you want to do in the “message to seller” field when you pay, along with a general sense of the subject of the course.
