Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Useful brief overview of the steps invovled in designing a course from Washington University in St. Louis.

This approach uses a begin with the end in mind strategy in which the designer asks what is it that the students need to be able to do by the end of the course in order to acheive the course goals.

This report provides information about outcomes from the Jisc Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design Programme.

Inclusive curriculum design helps to ensure that diverse perspectives are included in the classroom, including the viewpoints of marginalized groups.

This framework uses a backward design process that starts with considering the learning goals of the course first rather than last.

Designing an online course is different from designing a face-to-face course and this site offers some suggestions for how to take advantage of the online environment to maximize student learning.

This site features a list of resources that includes organizations, conferences, professional development, and digital resources for those involved in instructional design.

An argument for shifting emphasis away from the teacher and teaching content to focusing on the learners and how they understand concepts.

Strategies for measuring how students have achieved the objectives of the course, including resources for how to design asssessment.

Whether teaching at the undergraduate or graduate level, it is important for faculty to strategically evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching by measuring the extent to which students in the classroom are learning the course material.

These CATS focus on assessing the learning of a particular subject, analysis of information to facilitate understanding and problem solving, and synthesis of course content.

Formative assessment refers to tools that identify misconceptions, struggles, and learning gaps along the way and assess how to close those gaps.In contrast, summative assessments evaluate student learning, knowledge, proficiency, or success at the conclusion of an instructional period, like a unit, course, or program.

There are hundreds of variations of classroom assessment techniques. This site discusses some of the more commonly known techniques.

An authentic assignment is one that requires application of what students have learned to a new situation, and that demands judgment to determine what information and skills are relevant and how they should be used. Authentic assignments often focus on messy, complex real-world situations and their accompanying constraints; they can involve a real-world audience of stakeholders or “clients” as well.

Information about student learning can be assessed through both direct and indirect measures. Direct measures may include homework, quizzes, exams, reports, essays, research projects, case study analysis, and rubrics for oral and other performances. Examples of indirect measures include course evaluations, student surveys, course enrollment information, retention in the major, alumni surveys, and graduate school placement rates.

Faculty new to online teaching may feel that assessment in online courses is limited to multiple choice quizzes or traditional research papers. However, through careful design and technology use, there are other assessment options to effectively assess how well students achieve learning outcomes in an online course.