Establishing the Big Picture

Establishing the Big Picture

Your course may already have specific content it needs to cover and materials it needs use. Check with your department head or curriculum committee if there are course learning objectives or materials you need to use. 

Take these steps to establish the big picture of your course:

Once you are ready to take one next step, work to lower student costs in your course.

 

Steps to take

Define your Learning objectives
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The first step in course design is to determine what you want your students to learn in your class – your learning objectives. These are the knowledge and skills you want your students to leave your course having achieved. Only after setting your goals, can you determine how to measure if they achieved them and design lessons to help them in achieving your goals. 

The process that this course builder uses is often called backwards design. You can review backwards design, and find a template to help you ideate and plan, on our our aligned course design page.

Actions 
to Take

  1. Check if your course is a Core Education Course at UO. If so, it has some required learning outcomes you need to include in your course. Reach out to your department head or other instructors who've taught the course before to better understand what they are.
  2. Write 4-6 learning objectives that clearly let students know what you expect them to be able to do by the end of your course. See our page on Aligned Course Design for tips for writing learning objectives.
Questions
to Consider
  • If you are taking over a class or redesigning an existing one, what were the learning objectives previously? What flexibility does your department allow for adjusting them?
  • Are there key discipline-specific learning objectives for your course (e.g. lab skills for STEM courses, studio techniques for creative art courses, or listening and speaking skills in language courses)?
Support
Resources

Teaching Excellence 

 

select your Course materials
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If you are taking over a course from someone else, designing your own, or redesigning a course, you may input on the textbook and other materials your course uses. Your decision is important and must be timely as Oregon state law requires information about them be made available to students. Because of UO’s short 10-week quarters, course materials must be chosen long before your class launches, generally in first few weeks of the quarter before your course is offered. Some departments have a designated person who can report this information for you, or you may need to report it directly.

Student Views on Making a Course Inclusive
Instructors should use course material that reflects both the diversity of society and your discipline.

Consider these two quotes from UO students. Which you would rather hear your students say about your course? 

“A really diverse and thorough list of materials for this class helped a lot in my understanding of the issues we discussed. I also really appreciated that all of these materials were provided for free, absolutely awesome and should be the standard.” 

“We need class materials written by black, indigenous and/or people of color. We need more guest speakers that come from intersectional identities.”

Actions 
to Take

  1. Decide what textbooks, articles, videos, audio, or other resources support your students best in achieving your learning objectives.
  2. Follow the Office of the Provost's instructions for reporting textbook and materials on its Textbook & Course Materials Affordability page. It also contains information for adopting course materials through UO’s bookstore, The Duck Store.
Questions
to Consider
  • How does your department handle textbook reporting?
  • Is your course part of a sequence that uses the same textbook? Are there other sections of the course that use specific materials?
  • Are there materials you can share directly through Canvas instead of asking students to purchase them?
  • Do your course’s existing textbooks include software or website access for homework, problem solving, etc.?
  • Are digital versions of textbooks sufficient, or are print copies necessary?
Support
Resources

Teaching Excellence 

  • Providing high quality and accessible materials to your students is one component of Professional Teaching.
  • Using materials that reflect the diversity of opinion and views within your course content is one component of Inclusive Teaching.

 

Get a start with canvas
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At minimum, UO's Canvas Use policy require your site to have a copy of your course syllabus and updates to student progress during the term. But there’s so, so many ways you can use Canvas to support your students' learning. It can be a platform for you to communicate with your students and share course content with them. It can be an extension of your classroom where your students can learn, discuss, and collaborate with each other. It can support you in assigning, collecting, and grading student work. However you chose to use it, its organization can support or frustrate your students.

It's immensely helpful to get a start with Canvas now by exploring its features, understanding and using good design, and thinking about how it might be useful for you. At points throughout the Course Builder, we'll suggest ways to interact with Canvas as you plan your course. Get going now so you can develop Canvas as you develop your course.

Student Views on Making a Course Accessible
Instructors should have an organized course Canvas page.

Consider these two quotes from UO students. Which you would rather hear your students say about your course? 

“Everything on Canvas was easy to find and read! The instructor does a great job on uploading lectures and including written explanations of topics (in case you miss a day of class or need to review before an exam). “

“The teacher didn’t program Canvas to alert students when the discussions posts were due automatically, this resulted in me and many other students missing the posts completely. My grade was affected by the teacher’s lack of awareness about Canvas.”

Actions
to Take

  1. Log in to Canvas and see if your course is already available for you to work on. If not, request a development (sandbox) course for Canvas from Information Services. You can build your course in it, then import everything into your course site once it becomes available.
  2. Import one of our Canvas Course Templates into an empty Canvas site. The templates have highly structure organization and templates for assignments and quizzes that have aligned design built in.
  3. If you chose to design your own Canvas site rather than use a template, we suggest that you
    • use a weekly modular structure,
    • provide a weekly overview page,
    • have a consistent naming convention for files and assignments, and
    • create a "start here" page or module that orients students to your Canvas site.
      See our page on Providing a Clear Path Through Your Course for guidance on these best practices for structuring your Canvas page.
Questions 
to Consider
  • What is the best way to organize material for your course? Does forming weekly modules make sense? Is your course best organized by unit?
  • Which items from the course navigation menu are necessary for students to see?
  • What do your learning assistants think of your Canvas page? If you ask them to find information, are they able to easily do so? 
Support
Resources

Teaching Excellence 

 

Take One next step: lower student costs
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Reach out to UO's library for to learn about Textbook Affordability for Faculty. You can support in lowering student costs by using open-education resources or reserving course eBooks through the library