The University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE) opened its summer series with a session led by SAGES Fellow Barbara Burgess Van-Aken on the benefits of re-tooling an existing course over the relatively quiet summer, while the course is still fresh in our minds. The next UCITE session will continue that discussion.
Well-designed courses—those that maximize student learning—don’t happen by accident. They are the result of careful planning to make sure that all the key elements—content, teaching methods and assessments—are put together in a way that each reinforces the other two without interfering with them.
At times, much attention in preparing courses is focused on the scope and sequence of the content, without as much attention to the actual learning goals of the course, or how they might be measured. The next UCITE session, titled “Redesigning good courses,” will cover how to design courses that better integrate these elements into one coherent whole, using a method called “Backward Design.”
This interactive workshop will offer strategies for re-tooling a syllabus, drawing on Edmund Hansen’s concept of “Backward Course Design,” and will offer participants an opportunity to reboot an old syllabus or focus a new one.
This session will be offered twice: Thursday, June 8, and Friday, June 9, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Allen Memorial Medical Library’s Herrick Room (use Adelbert Road doors).
Attendees are encouraged to bring a syllabus to work on.
Pizza and sodas will be provided.
RSVP to ucite@case.edu.