by Jeff Rients & Cliff Rouder

You’ve taught the same course multiple times in the same way over the span of multiple semesters. But our students and the world they live in is constantly changing. We need to ensure that our students will be ready for the challenges of our constantly changing world. That means review and revision is in order, even for courses that are currently working pretty well. Caution: Side effects can include a renewed enthusiasm for teaching and perhaps better SFFs!

Start With Yourself

Any learning environment you want to build (or re-build) will have many variables in play. One of the most important variables is you! Before undertaking any effort to revamp a course, take a few minutes to jot down some ideas about your pedagogical values, what kind of teacher you are, and what kind of teacher you want to be. Consider a review (and possible revision) of your teaching philosophy statement.  

Check In with Any Programmatic Context

Is your course required for a degree program? Then you want to give some thought to what the course is supposed to achieve within the context of the overall program. Here are some key questions to consider: Is your course part of a sequence of courses? Then you should consult colleagues who teach the course before and/or after your course. How do instructors of the preceding course end their semester? How can you build off what they are teaching? How do the instructors that follow you begin the next semester? What can you be doing to better prepare students for success in that course?

Take this revamp as an opportunity to re-align the course with the priorities of the institution, the program, and the needs of the students. Similarly, if you are teaching a general education course or a writing-intensive course, it is important to review the GenEd and WI guidelines for your course in preparation for any revisions. 

Review the Course Description

The published description sets the expectations for the students. Review the official description and compare it to your programmatic context and current course design. Is your present course aligned with those expectations? Don’t beat yourself up if you find that your course no longer completely aligns with the course description, but welcome the chance to get back on track vis-a-vis your students’ expectations. 

Keep in mind, though, that course descriptions sometimes are poor representations of what the course goals actually should be. Many course descriptions talk too much about content and too little about what the students will actually be doing in the course. So you may need to think about that description as suggestive rather than proscriptive. The description may need to be tweaked to more closely reflect the course learning goals.

Rethink Your Course Goals

The key to any successful course design is a clearly articulated set of learning goals for the students. Review your top-level learning goals for the course. Are they in alignment with the course description and programmatic context? Are they worthy of students striving for greatness in an institution of higher learning? Are your course goals focused solely on the memorization of  course content or do they challenge students to do something substantive with their learning? Will the students learn new things about themselves, their world, and their relationship to it? Will they be equipped to continue learning about your course topic even after their semester with you is over?

Revised course goals inevitably lead to further revisions. New, robust goals require new, robust assessments to measure student progress towards the goals and supply them with the necessary feedback for improvement. New goals and new assessments necessitate new classroom activities and course content so that students have opportunities to learn and practice before the assessment.

Review Your Content and Materials

Part of the revamp may likely include changes to your course content and your materials. Do you need to update content based on changes in your field? Have you checked to ensure that voices representing diverse and perhaps lesser-known perspectives or works are included? Consider open educational materials to reduce barriers to success. While it may be tempting to keep adding content, we recommend favoring deep learning on essential content over shallow learning across a broader array of content.

A comprehensive review of your content and materials includes a review of your syllabus, assignment sheets, instructions for in-class activities, slideshows, and lecture notes. What is working well? What needs a little tweaking? Is there anything that needs to be reworked from scratch? If you keep contemporaneous notes of your teaching, review them. Whether you have such notes or not, don’t revamp your content and materials just to revamp them. Identify specific ways your materials can improve access to content in ways that support student learning.

Also look for ways to expand access. We want to help as many students succeed as possible, and we have a wonderful framework for helping us do that called Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL asks us to consider proactively how we can meet the needs of as many learners as possible without the need for individual accommodation. There are three pillars of UDL to consider: Providing multiple means for engaging students; multiple channels for delivering course content, and multiple ways for students to demonstrate their learning.

Make Room for Active Learning!

“If I say it, they will learn it,” is an all too common thought about teaching. The research on learning is clear that “if they work with it, they will learn it.” In other words, giving our students opportunities to assess their understanding and work with course content during class (aka active learning), yields greater student success. See our Another Look at Active Learning blog series for recent studies demonstrating the effectiveness of active learning on grades, failure rates, sense of belonging, and well-being.

The challenge is to take a close look at your content and ask yourself two questions that will enable you to make room for active learning: Are there basic definitions and other foundational knowledge that students can be responsible for before coming to class? Is there any content that falls into the category of “tangentially related” or “nice to know” that really doesn’t help students meet the goals of the course? Remember that explaining why you are conducting class this way, the benefits to your students, and the expectations you have about being prepared for class and actively participating are paramount for gaining student buy-in. Also remember that active learning can be viewed on a continuum from incorporating some opportunities for questions during a lecture to “flipping the classroom,” i.e., devoting the whole class period to doing rather than simply listening to a lecture. Check out these active learning techniques that may meaningfully align with your assessments and course goals.

Consider Incorporating AI 

We know that AI is here to stay, so let’s help our students use these ever advancing tools to develop their critical thinking and media literacy skills. Enabling your students to evaluate responses for crucial elements such as accuracy and bias to exploring issues that have arisen and that may arise in the future, e.g., data privacy, environmental impact, intellectual property, and labor, there are ways to incorporate AI to help students progress toward meeting your course goals. Check out our blog series Faculty Adventures in the AI Learning Frontier to give you ideas and guide you on your AI journey.

The CAT is Here to Help

The CAT has a number of resources to help you revamp your course. Check out our workshop offerings each semester and our annual events, online resources, as well as our EdVice Exchange blog. As always, our educational developers are here to help you with a refresh through our one-to-one consultations or by visiting our virtual or in-person ed tech labs.