Cohesive-Course-Design

This site introduces theories and best practices to guide university course design.

Overview

This website introduces constructive alignment and backward design as frameworks for creating cohesive, effective, student-centered courses. This site also explains how these theories can inform course design. Best practices and takeaways are exemplified by interviews with selected award-winning instructors at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

This site has been developed for a graduate course offered at UCSB (College and University Teaching — From Theory to Practice) as part of the Certificate in College and University Teaching program.

Active Learning

What are Constructive Alignment and Backward Design?

Constructive alignment and backward design are frameworks for course design and curriculum planning that come out of the educational theory of constructivism. Constructivism puts the student at the center of learning, challenging “banking” models of teaching that view students as blank slates and the teacher as the primary holder of knowledge. According to constructivist theories of learning, “learners arrive at meaning by actively selecting, and cumulatively constructing, their own knowledge, through both individual and social activity. The learner brings an accumulation of assumptions, motives, intentions, and previous knowledge that envelopes every teaching/learning situation and determines the course and quality of the learning that may take place” (Biggs 348). Constructivism is the theoretical foundation that informs constructive alignment and backward design.

Constructive alignment

Constructive alignment is a method of course design in which the learning objectives, assessments of students, and learning activities inform one another and create opportunities for students to co-construct knowledge and meaning in the classroom. Constructive alignment is a continuous, comprehensive process for ensuring that one’s learning outcomes, assessments, and learning activities mutually inform one another. This is a self-reflexive, recursive method for planning that requires opportunities for formative assessment and evaluation in order to check for students’ understanding and evaluate the effectiveness of one’s instruction.

Video on constructive alignment:
Constructive Alignment

On Constructive Alignment:

According to Marton and Booth in “The Learner’s Experience of Learning,” Constructivism ‘is not a particular method but an attitude towards teaching which implies a focal awareness of the learner and the learner’s world.., each teacher has to tackle the principles and appropriate them within the context of his or her own teaching” (cited in Biggs 349). Biggs goes on to ask, “But how is the teacher to move from a “focal awareness … of the learner’s world”, and appropriating principles, to doing things differently?” Constructive alignment is the method of putting constructivist learning approaches (student-centered learning) into practice through one’s course design, a process in which the learning objectives, course assessment, and course activities mutually inform one another.

“Constructivism comprises a family of theories but all have in common the centrality of the learner’s activities in creating meaning. These and related ideas have important implications for teaching and assessment. Instructional designers for their part have emphasised alignment between the objectives of a course or unit and the targets for assessing student performance. ‘Constructive alignment’ represents a marriage of the two thrusts, constructivism being used as a framework to guide decision-making at all stages in instructional design: in deriving curriculum objectives in terms of performances that represent a suitably high cognitive level, in deciding teaching/learning activities judged to elicit those performances, and to assess and summatively report student performance” (Biggs 347).

Backward design

Backward design is the pragmatic model of planning that is an initial step for constructive alignment. There are two key ideas to backward design. First, according to backward design, teachers should be assessing students for understanding and application, higher levels of Bloom’s learning taxonomy, rather than memorization of content. Second, in their planning, teachers should start from their desired learning outcomes and design the course, including assessments and learning activities, backward from that point.

Video on backward design:
Constructive Alignment

In practice, neither constructive alignment nor backward design are strictly linear per se. They are self-reflexive, continuous processes of planning that help teacher zoom-out and consider the big ideas, essential questions, and desired learning outcomes rather than getting overwhelmed by content coverage. Both of these models for course design and planning allow the instructor to place the student and their learning at the center of course design, rather than content, and offer a method for creating cohesive, effective curriculum.

On Backward Design:

“Backward design may be thought of as purposeful task analysis: Given a task to be accomplished, how do we get there? Or one might call it planned coaching: What kinds of lessons and practices are needed to master key performances? The approach to curricular design we are advocating is logically forward and commonsensical but backward in terms of conventional habits, whereby teachers typically think in terms of a series of activities (as in the apples unit presented in the Introduction) or how best to cover a topic (as in the world history vignette). This backward approach to curricular design also departs from another common practice: thinking about assessment as something we do at the end, once teaching is completed. Rather than creating assessments near the conclusion of a unit of study (or relying on the tests provided by textbook publishers, which may not completely or appropriately assess our standards), backward design calls for us to operationalize our goals or standards in terms of assessment evidence as we begin to plan a unit or course” (McTighe and Wiggins Understanding by Design).

How can these theories inform course design?

By basing syllabi on the learning outcomes of students, you can implement these theories in your teaching. As John Biggs points out, “learning is constructed by what activities the students carry out; learning is about what they do, not about what we teachers do”. To this end, instructors need to envision what students need to get out of the class and how they can reach that goal. The following are some ways to improve teaching with these methods:

Ensure that students are at the center of the syllabus

How to create a “learner-centered” syllabus (Richmond):

Identify key learning outcomes and themes

The following table, created by Biggs and McTighe, is a template for getting started with a backward model syllabus:

Understanding by Design

Think about course design from a student perspective

In his article “Enhancing Teaching through Constructive Alignment,” John Biggs cites the Wood’s research in Steffe and Gale’s Constructivism in Education (1995), saying that teachers should do the following:

Test student-centered courses to learn from and improve them

Brian Hains and Brittany Smith conducted a case study to examine the development of a student-designed experiential course from both student and faculty perspectives. Seven undergraduate students developed and implemented a 12-day experiential learning course with eight learning outcomes. Results:

In summary, ways to make syllabi student-centered include:

Video about Dr. Steven Gaulin’s flipped lectures:
GauchoCast

What are some best practices and takeaways?

In their article “Navigating the Bumpy Road to Student-Centered Instruction” (1996) Richard M. Felder and Rebecca Brent cite chemical engineer Donald R. Woods’s (1994) work on the beginning stages of introducing a student-centered approach to a class, the members of which were initially very resistant to these new ideas.

Comparing the process of introducing a student-centered approach to a class to the stages of psychological trauma (Woods):

  1. Shock: “I don’t believe it-we have to do homework in groups and she isn’t going to lecture on the chapter before the problems are due?”
  2. Denial: “She can’t be serious about this-if I ignore it, it will go away.”
  3. Strong emotion: “I can’t do it-I’d better drop the course and take it next semester” or “She can’t do this to me-I’m going to complain to the department head!”
  4. Resistance and withdrawal: “I’m not going to play her dumb games-I don’t care if she fails me.”
  5. Surrender and acceptance: “OK, I think it’s stupid but I’m stuck with it and I might as well give it a shot.”
  6. Struggle and exploration: “Everybody else seems to be getting this-maybe I need to try harder or do things differently to get it to work for me.”
  7. Return of confidence: “Hey, I may be able to pull this off after all-I think it’s starting to work.”
  8. Integration and success. “YES! This stuff is all right-I don’t understand why I had so much trouble with it before.” (1996 [1994]: 2)

I’ve taught enough to have recognized each of these deer-in-headlights stages in the eyes of many of my students at the very mention of the words “group work” in class. As Felder and Brent go on to say, “Cooperative learning tends to be the hardest student-centered method to sell initially, especially to high academic achievers and strong introverts.” (5) As an ethnomusicologist, I was taught the importance of self-reflexivity in my own research, so, practice what you preach, right? Just as non-music majors in an introductory survey class must be introduced to basic threshold concepts in an engaging way (the 1995 film Mr. Holland’s Opus, albeit clearly given a Hollywood sheen, has many great celluloid examples of high school music teacher Mr. Holland’s process of trial and error in this respect, as does the quoted learning objectives from Dr. Dirkse’s Music Appreciation syllabus quoted on this site), this highly strong introverted academic was thrown into the grieving process of group work in the creation of content for this website:

  1. Shock - Group project?!!!?!! Website?!?!?!
  2. Denial - IS a river in Egypt… let me continue doing geography quizzes on www.sporcle.com until the project goes away…
  3. Strong emotion - NO! There’s no way I can complete this project! I need to remember the official language of Bhutan!
  4. Resistance and withdrawal - I’m not going to do it. There’s no point. What I can do is sit here and remember the Oscar winners for Best Picture from 1927-2013.
  5. Surrender and acceptance - I guess I have to do it, there’s no other way around it. Has anyone ever really seen the films Cimarron or Cavalcade?
  6. Struggle and exploration - My fellow group members really seem to know what they are doing. How?
  7. Return of confidence - Hey, if I do work, maybe I too can know what I am doing?
  8. Integration and success - A-ha! I have been involved in a group project and now I understand the value of such an undertaking. Every group needs a comedian, right?

Ultimately, the final step is a key takeaway from any course designed around principles of constructive alignment or backward design. By understanding that a class activity has been formulated around these principles, students learn that not only does their newly acquired knowledge have value, the process through which they arrived there has value too.

How do instructors design cohesive courses at UCSB?

We interviewed several award-winning instructors at UCSB who are putting these teaching theories into practice. To better understand this process, we asked the following questions:

  1. What were the key concepts for your courses and how did you assess students based on them? Do you start with ideas for activities, weekly questions, etc?
  2. How have you structured your classes? (chronologically, weekly questions, thematically, etc). Has this changed over time?

Professor Aashish Mehta, Global Studies

Aashish Mehta

Introduction to Global Socioeconomic and Political Processes - Syllabus

  1. I minimize the time spent on assessment in large undergraduate courses. It cannot be done in a way that provides constructive feedback given the resources available. Or, more accurately, if we did do assessment in that way, it would leave no time for teaching - intellectual development and skill acquisition. Rather, I treat assessment exclusively as a means of incentivizing student effort, so that the time spent teaching is productive time. I use problem sets for homework to make student engage with skills and concepts; multiple choice tests to make them study; and course participation scores to reward students who are making efforts but falling short due to excessive work commitments or lacuna in their prior education.
  2. Each course is structured around an “itinerary”. I start with a list of concepts/ideas/debates with which they should be familiar. Then I fiddle a lot with sequencing to determine which ones build on knowledge of the others. Then I order them chronologically, starting from the ground up. Readings are selected last, as a means of backstopping the ideas.

Course Objectives from Dr. Mehta’s Global 2 (Intro to Global Socioeconomic and Political Processes) course syllabus at UCSB:

This interdisciplinary course is designed to introduce students to the study of global socioeconomic and political processes, interactions, and changes that affect the contemporary world. In the twenty years since the end of the Cold War in 1990, the world has changed radically. The break-up of the Soviet Union, the waning of American power, the growing economic strength of Western Europe East Asia and the BRIC countries, the increase in religious and ethnic tensions in South Asia and the Middle East, the US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, the emergence of global environmental problems, the rapid spread of new communications technologies, and the global economic recession have given birth to new forms of social and political interactions. In this class, we will try to understand these developments in their regional and global contexts. Roughly one half of the lectures and readings will introduce global issues as they effect, and are effected by, people in particular regions of the world. The other half will look at key global issues on a transnational level. These will be presented in part through case studies that will highlight two ideas: (i) while globalization results from transnational forces, it is manifest nationally in ways that continue to depend upon local conditions and the responses of national governments; and (ii) while the globalization of information networks has made it increasingly easy to know a little about many events and processes, this information remains extremely difficult to interpret. The class is one of the gateway courses for the Global Studies major.

Professor Peter Alagona, Environmental Studies and History

Peter Alagona

Introduction to Environmental Studies - Syllabus

  1. There’s no magic to what I do. The key to being a good teacher, I think, is (1) caring and (2) continuing to push yourself, sometimes in the absence of strong incentives, to do better. My introductory ES course seeks to develop critical thinking skills. I define “critical thinking” as the ability to analyze diverse forms of evidence and assess competing claims. For this reason, I privilege concepts over content. My threshold concepts for ES 1 include things like change, complexity, interdisciplinarity, justice, and power.
  2. I used to assess students based on take-home assignments and exams. This year, however, I radically changed the structure of the course, throwing out the take home assignments and eliminating the final exam. I kept the midterms (to make sure students were following along and getting the basic, nuts and bolts ideas), and I replaced the rest with a 5-step scaffolded term paper. The paper was 8-10 pages long; the instructions were 13. Making this change was a big risk, but it paid off. Students were required to bring in key concepts from the lectures and readings, follow the multiple steps, and hone important research and writing skills. Yet they were able to pick a topic of their choice and do a deep dive into it. A few things need changing, but overall it worked out great.

Course Objectives from Dr. Alagona’s ES 2 (Intro to Environmental Studies) course syllabus at UCSB:

Jeremy Chow, PhD Candidate in English at UCSB, winner of GSA Excellence in Teaching Award 2017

Jeremy Chow

  1. As a teacher, I prioritize the application of learning, which, in my classroom, asks students to not only take ownership of their education—they’re paying a lot of money to be here—but to be active participants and consumers of knowledge. By prioritizing this, my students become better readers, writers, and cultural critics. In literary study, we emphasize the ability to write clearly, concisely, and articulately. Teaching this is difficult not only because these concepts are subjective (and culturally varied), but because we need to think more capaciously about what assignments can help our students achieve the goal of becoming better metacognitive learners. In my classroom, I asks students to practice writing in different genres (research essay, op-ed, film review, creative writing, etc.) that might open interdisciplinary opportunities and speak to a variety of different learning styles. In addition, I advocate for a seminar-style classroom that champions conversation and discussion. Our goal is not unanimous agreement; rather, I prioritize the process of discussion and open engagement, which values everyone’s voice. I tell my students that we do ourselves a disservice if everyone’s voice is not heard.
  2. Syllabus creation is a tricky beast to wrangle. My syllabi are deeply structured, which extends itself to how I structure my classes each day. Essential questions are, just that, essential on a syllabus. A clear idea of assignments and readings are valuable so that students—who may be sitting on the fence about the class—can make an educated decision as to whether this class and this instructor will work for them. With regards to the day-to-day, each day I put an agenda on the board, which guides our conversations. Within that agenda, I ensure that there are activities that allow for group or pair work, independent study, and also a means of information gathering from either me or our conversation as a whole. Each day we discuss, so that features largely in our daily praxis. Though structure has remained the same since my teacher ed days, what has changed is how much lesson planning I prepare before a class. Whereas before I would plan out timestamps—at this time, we’ll move onto this—I now use ideas as guiding lights for the classroom. At the start, I want to focus on this idea. Then move to this activity, then allow for X. At the end, I want to ensure that we looked at y. I do this now, not because of laziness, but because I have learned to be more flexible and adaptable to my students and their needs that day. I may have an agenda in mind, but if we move onto a separate plan of action, I must be prepared to buckle up and enjoy the ride. There is no such thing as useless questions, asides, or tangents. They all lead us to different places and can help orient different types of learning for different learners.

Essential Questions from Jeremy Chow’s English 22 (Introduction to Literature & the Environment) at UCSB:

Throughout this course, we will ask what constitutes “communication” and/or “contact” between humans and simian nonhumans. How do authors represent these interactions in early modernity? And do these representations change as we move closer to the present, especially with the rise of animal cognition studies and “humane” societies? We must also evaluate the diverse and ever-changing ethical stakes that materialize when considering the modern human relationship with primates. We are thus interested in how humans affect anthropoids; how anthropoids affect humans; and how these relationships are configured by literature, construed broadly.

Professor Scott Dirkse, Adjunct Professor of Music at Bakersfield College, UCSB PhD alumnus and 2013 winner of GSA Excellence in Teaching Award

Scott Dirkse

  1. I do frequent formative assessments during class time, no matter the class size. In music appreciation courses, I ask students questions based on active listening tasks and have students respond with group oral responses, finger responses, or written responses, so I may assess their level of mastery and determine which skills need more practice. This allows me to adjust my teaching to ensure that students are ready for the summative course assessments that require applying these listening skills in listening reports and in-class quizzes. I’ve noticed that some instructors are hesitant to employ group response methods in large classes, but I’ve found it to be a useful tool to keep the students engaged and assess their level of understanding.
  2. When teaching listening skills, I endeavor to select a lot of popular music that students are already familiar with as students are first getting acquainted with the new elements. Once students learn these skills, we apply them to the main repertoire for the course. Although I have explored working with various curriculum timelines, I still prefer to teach my general education music courses with a chronological approach. Because music notation began simply and gradually increased in complexity, it allows me to scaffold students’ toolbox of listening skills as the notated music becomes more complex. The repertoire for the course always changes based on the needs and goals of the department and institution at which I’m teaching.

Course Objectives from Dr. Dirkse’s Music B22 (Music Appreciation) course syllabus at Bakersfield College:

This course is centered on the belief that all music is interesting, important, and worthy of study. In this course, you will engage with music in a variety of manners. You will learn how music is constructed and develop critical listening skills that will allow you to appreciate unfamiliar music, talk about different types of music, and listen to your own music in new ways. You will also acquire an understanding of the history and development of Western art music and its interactions with culture and society.

Connecting Learning to Teaching

Cohesive syllabus and course design is informed by the teaching theories we’ve explored in GRAD 210:

References

Biggs, J. (1996). Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher education, 32(3), 347-364.

Biggs, J. (1999). Teaching for Quality Learning at University (SHRE & Open University Press, Buckingham).

Dreyfus, R. (1995). Mr. Holland’s Opus. Directed by Stephen Herek. Los Angeles: Buena Vista Pictures.

Hains, B. J., & Smith, B. (2012). Student-centered course design: Empowering students to become self-directed learners. Journal of Experiential Education, 35(2), 357-374.

Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (1996). Navigating the bumpy road to student-centered instruction. College teaching, 44(2), 43-47.

Reynolds, H. L., & Kearns, K. D. (2017). A planning tool for incorporating backward design, active learning, and authentic assessment in the college classroom. College Teaching, 65(1), 17-27.

Richmond, A. S. (2016). Constructing a Learner-Centered Syllabus: One Professor’s Journey. IDEA Paper# 60. IDEA Center, Inc.

Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Woods, D. R. (1994). How to Gain the Most from PBL, Waterdown, ON.

Additional Resources

Links and Podcasts:

Articles on Student-Centered Syllabi

Team and Contributions

Maite Urcaregui, Department of English: What are Constructive Alignment and Backward Design?

Leila Zonouzi, Department of Global Studies: How can these theories inform course design?

Sarah Latanyshyn, Department of Music: What are some best practices and takeaways?

Sara Lafia, Department of Geography: How do instructors design cohesive courses at UCSB?