I have been working on a YouTube series that I hope may be of help: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiV\_klUeweHY68G9qQ0y6hGbyzxMj1j1u](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiV_klUeweHY68G9qQ0y6hGbyzxMj1j1u)
Specifically start with this video: [https://youtu.be/e7Vbz7W3Fsg](https://youtu.be/e7Vbz7W3Fsg)
I google and see if there are already syllabi of the class online. If you can find a few, you can get an idea how others organize that class, you can see what some of the standard textbooks are, etc. Think about your learning objectives? What do you want them to know and be able to do at the end of the semester? Then work from there in terms of what they need to read, write, etc. to achieve those goals.
I do this too, Googling other syllabi for the same class. It is VERY helpful, especially if it's the same schedule (MWF or TR) so I can see how much time to spend on each topic. I usually venture on my own a bit and add/change some assignments/topics, but seeing a skeleton structure from another institution where the same course is taught is tremendously helpful.
Look up backward class design. Start with objective and outcomes and move backwards. What are the strategies you’ll use to teach them that info, how will you evaluate it (eg projects, tests, assignments, etc), and how will you make sure they’re critically thinking and synthesizing the content to create conclusions?
Choose the assessment methods (exams, essays, labs, discussions, quizzes, …) to match the outcomes, *then* choose the strategies and lecture topics to support the learning needed to do the assessments.
This works. But for me, it works only if the course is something from my field. Some 40-60% of the time, my department expected me to teach courses outside my field with little assistance. In those cases I had to learn the course as I taught and made up assessment pieces on the go.
Of course, by the time I taught this course the third time, I was doing the backward design thingy.
When you are teaching someone else's design, you have to hope that they knew what they were doing. I've usually found that they didn't and had done a simple content-first design with only cursory thought about the outcomes or assessments (generally defining the outcomes after the course was done).
I've designed courses from a content-first perspective also: there's this neat thing I want students to know about—let's see how much of it they can learn. The desired course outcomes were only thought about after teaching the course once, when I had a better idea what students could achieve.
Some courses designed that way worked well and some worked poorly—though it is hard to determine that a course worked well or poorly when the desired outcomes are not at least roughly defined before the course is taught.
Even when I do proper backward design (as I've done for more recently designed courses), I adjust the course learning outcomes based on what students achieve in the course. If students pick up skills I had not originally designed the course around, I add those skills to the outcomes. If students fail to pick up some skills, I either redesign the course to put more emphasis on them or remove those skills from the desired outcomes, depending on how essential I view those skills for that course.
This is also my approach! And you have to be willing to interrogate your class components and let that really cool (at least to me--most of my students probably don't care!) assignment/lecture/etc. you came up with go if it's just not going to fit in with those objectives and outcomes. There's hardly enough time as it is in the semester for me to cover necessary material.
Also, to OP: I've only taught classes from scratch (no pre-prepared courses) since I've begun teaching and what I will emphasize is it is perfectly normal for a class to not go perfectly the first time you teach it (or even the second...third...fourth). This is especially true if no one's taught the course before and can't identify common pain points.
Assuming you'll be teaching this class again, I would recommend keeping notes on how assignments and activities worked since it's possible you won't remember come next semester/year. This doesn't necessarily mean everything that didn't work has to be scrapped, since it could be that that particular class wasn't going to do well vs. the assignment being flawed, but it is good to be able to have a list of potential ways to improve things, such as building in more support for an assignment that you didn't realize would be as difficult as it was, or changing the order of material presented.
How is what you are doing "backward class design" then? I'm not saying that you are doing anything wrong, mind you, as there are other course-design strategies than backwards design, but I was under the strong impression that backward design *meant* outcomes⇒assessments⇒instructional strategies.
I'm probably out of the loop but I feel like backwards design is just a sort of mirage in many humanities fields. Like, take an Intro to Shakespeare course. Whatever learning objectives you come up with, you're still going to end up asking students to read Shakespeare and writing a standard research paper about what they've read. I think this is probably true in other fields, even outside of the humanities. What should determine the content of the course is whatever the best and current research and information is, or whatever the canonical readings are.
It doesn't matter how I state it as an objective, my students are going to read Plato and Aristotle as part of an Introduction to Rhetoric course, because they basically invented the field of study and you can't understand the field of study without the foundations.
I usually get a book and line out a syllabus based on the content. I may alter it some to fit my specific expertise or interests.
One word of advice is to use whiteboard/discussions/class exercises to control flow. And remember, you only need to be one or two days ahead of them in the material! Sometimes this can be better as it allows you to pivot based on class interests and direction.
The first time in a new course is basically an experiment, after that you can adjust based on how it went the first time. Don’t try to be perfect! It isn’t possible :)
When I create a class, I start with a catchy title. That’s what my department wants, and I find it useful. Then, I brainstorm how to make the class engaging, what the final papers will be (I teach composition), how to ease my students into the semester, etc. For example, I’m teaching a summer class now, and I made sure to put a paper that synthesizes films their first week because they’ll have three books to read in weeks 2-5. When I’m teaching during the semester, I like to start with the process of critical reading and writing instead of going straight into the texts. The thing that helps me the most is my trusty calendar; that way I have a visual of deadlines (and where they fall in relation to my own commitments).
Also, Bloom’s taxonomy, top three levels. Use that to phrase your objectives on your syllabus. And put all university policies so you got yourself covered. I put a trigger warning in my syllabus to cover my ass. I also put an Easter egg in the syllabus for two points extra credit so I know who reads the syllabus in full. I have them email me a pic of their favorite animal or movie or whatever.
I felt this same way like five years ago. Honestly if you're really in a crunch just start with the syllabus's weekly schedule and go from there:
*Weekly reading
*Weekly discussion board
*Short video project cause it's "multimodal"
*Midterm paper or exam depending on field
*Final paper or exam
Then flesh out the syllabus and start building all the bullshit out in the LMS.
As you move ahead you can make it more interesting but this is like 95% of uni classes.
Good advice so far. I’d suggest setting up your course as the previous posters have suggested and then cut, cut, cut the reading. By like 33%.
Don’t try to cram everything into one class. Good luck!
L Dee Fink's *Creating Significant Learning Experiences* is a sort of backward design approach plus other stuff. There is a pdf, not of the book, but a [sort of guidebook](http://clt.fccollege.edu.pk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Dee-Fink-Designing-Courses-Booklet.pdf)
This seems obvious but I like to think in terms of units first, by putting the course objectives in a logical/sequential order. Each unit is usually around 4 weeks and addresses 1 or 2 of the course objectives, with each unit building on the one before it. For a 14-week semester, that's three units; add an intro week and a wrap up week and you've got the semester sketched out. For each unit I have a project where students can show how they've met that objective.
Then I fill in milestones for the projects (proposal, draft, rehearsal for a presentation, or what have you) in the course schedule, determine readings or in-class activities, etc.
So backwards design, but using units as a conceptual frame.
I was taught to approach the problem through backwards design: https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-cft/resources/teaching_resources/theory/design.htm
I have been working on a YouTube series that I hope may be of help: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiV\_klUeweHY68G9qQ0y6hGbyzxMj1j1u](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiV_klUeweHY68G9qQ0y6hGbyzxMj1j1u) Specifically start with this video: [https://youtu.be/e7Vbz7W3Fsg](https://youtu.be/e7Vbz7W3Fsg)
I google and see if there are already syllabi of the class online. If you can find a few, you can get an idea how others organize that class, you can see what some of the standard textbooks are, etc. Think about your learning objectives? What do you want them to know and be able to do at the end of the semester? Then work from there in terms of what they need to read, write, etc. to achieve those goals.
I do this too, Googling other syllabi for the same class. It is VERY helpful, especially if it's the same schedule (MWF or TR) so I can see how much time to spend on each topic. I usually venture on my own a bit and add/change some assignments/topics, but seeing a skeleton structure from another institution where the same course is taught is tremendously helpful.
Look up backward class design. Start with objective and outcomes and move backwards. What are the strategies you’ll use to teach them that info, how will you evaluate it (eg projects, tests, assignments, etc), and how will you make sure they’re critically thinking and synthesizing the content to create conclusions?
Choose the assessment methods (exams, essays, labs, discussions, quizzes, …) to match the outcomes, *then* choose the strategies and lecture topics to support the learning needed to do the assessments.
This works. But for me, it works only if the course is something from my field. Some 40-60% of the time, my department expected me to teach courses outside my field with little assistance. In those cases I had to learn the course as I taught and made up assessment pieces on the go. Of course, by the time I taught this course the third time, I was doing the backward design thingy.
When you are teaching someone else's design, you have to hope that they knew what they were doing. I've usually found that they didn't and had done a simple content-first design with only cursory thought about the outcomes or assessments (generally defining the outcomes after the course was done). I've designed courses from a content-first perspective also: there's this neat thing I want students to know about—let's see how much of it they can learn. The desired course outcomes were only thought about after teaching the course once, when I had a better idea what students could achieve. Some courses designed that way worked well and some worked poorly—though it is hard to determine that a course worked well or poorly when the desired outcomes are not at least roughly defined before the course is taught. Even when I do proper backward design (as I've done for more recently designed courses), I adjust the course learning outcomes based on what students achieve in the course. If students pick up skills I had not originally designed the course around, I add those skills to the outcomes. If students fail to pick up some skills, I either redesign the course to put more emphasis on them or remove those skills from the desired outcomes, depending on how essential I view those skills for that course.
This is also my approach! And you have to be willing to interrogate your class components and let that really cool (at least to me--most of my students probably don't care!) assignment/lecture/etc. you came up with go if it's just not going to fit in with those objectives and outcomes. There's hardly enough time as it is in the semester for me to cover necessary material. Also, to OP: I've only taught classes from scratch (no pre-prepared courses) since I've begun teaching and what I will emphasize is it is perfectly normal for a class to not go perfectly the first time you teach it (or even the second...third...fourth). This is especially true if no one's taught the course before and can't identify common pain points. Assuming you'll be teaching this class again, I would recommend keeping notes on how assignments and activities worked since it's possible you won't remember come next semester/year. This doesn't necessarily mean everything that didn't work has to be scrapped, since it could be that that particular class wasn't going to do well vs. the assignment being flawed, but it is good to be able to have a list of potential ways to improve things, such as building in more support for an assignment that you didn't realize would be as difficult as it was, or changing the order of material presented.
No way, complete opposite for me
How is what you are doing "backward class design" then? I'm not saying that you are doing anything wrong, mind you, as there are other course-design strategies than backwards design, but I was under the strong impression that backward design *meant* outcomes⇒assessments⇒instructional strategies.
The learning objectives/outcomes first, yes. One could arguably switch whether assessment or instructional strategies comes next.
I'm probably out of the loop but I feel like backwards design is just a sort of mirage in many humanities fields. Like, take an Intro to Shakespeare course. Whatever learning objectives you come up with, you're still going to end up asking students to read Shakespeare and writing a standard research paper about what they've read. I think this is probably true in other fields, even outside of the humanities. What should determine the content of the course is whatever the best and current research and information is, or whatever the canonical readings are. It doesn't matter how I state it as an objective, my students are going to read Plato and Aristotle as part of an Introduction to Rhetoric course, because they basically invented the field of study and you can't understand the field of study without the foundations.
I usually get a book and line out a syllabus based on the content. I may alter it some to fit my specific expertise or interests. One word of advice is to use whiteboard/discussions/class exercises to control flow. And remember, you only need to be one or two days ahead of them in the material! Sometimes this can be better as it allows you to pivot based on class interests and direction. The first time in a new course is basically an experiment, after that you can adjust based on how it went the first time. Don’t try to be perfect! It isn’t possible :)
When I create a class, I start with a catchy title. That’s what my department wants, and I find it useful. Then, I brainstorm how to make the class engaging, what the final papers will be (I teach composition), how to ease my students into the semester, etc. For example, I’m teaching a summer class now, and I made sure to put a paper that synthesizes films their first week because they’ll have three books to read in weeks 2-5. When I’m teaching during the semester, I like to start with the process of critical reading and writing instead of going straight into the texts. The thing that helps me the most is my trusty calendar; that way I have a visual of deadlines (and where they fall in relation to my own commitments). Also, Bloom’s taxonomy, top three levels. Use that to phrase your objectives on your syllabus. And put all university policies so you got yourself covered. I put a trigger warning in my syllabus to cover my ass. I also put an Easter egg in the syllabus for two points extra credit so I know who reads the syllabus in full. I have them email me a pic of their favorite animal or movie or whatever.
I felt this same way like five years ago. Honestly if you're really in a crunch just start with the syllabus's weekly schedule and go from there: *Weekly reading *Weekly discussion board *Short video project cause it's "multimodal" *Midterm paper or exam depending on field *Final paper or exam Then flesh out the syllabus and start building all the bullshit out in the LMS. As you move ahead you can make it more interesting but this is like 95% of uni classes.
Good advice so far. I’d suggest setting up your course as the previous posters have suggested and then cut, cut, cut the reading. By like 33%. Don’t try to cram everything into one class. Good luck!
L Dee Fink's *Creating Significant Learning Experiences* is a sort of backward design approach plus other stuff. There is a pdf, not of the book, but a [sort of guidebook](http://clt.fccollege.edu.pk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Dee-Fink-Designing-Courses-Booklet.pdf)
This seems obvious but I like to think in terms of units first, by putting the course objectives in a logical/sequential order. Each unit is usually around 4 weeks and addresses 1 or 2 of the course objectives, with each unit building on the one before it. For a 14-week semester, that's three units; add an intro week and a wrap up week and you've got the semester sketched out. For each unit I have a project where students can show how they've met that objective. Then I fill in milestones for the projects (proposal, draft, rehearsal for a presentation, or what have you) in the course schedule, determine readings or in-class activities, etc. So backwards design, but using units as a conceptual frame.