Polishing up your winter term course plans over the break? Hoping your students' final papers and exams will be even better than the ones you just finished grading? Much research on learning and teaching suggests that you can get your students on the right track now by designing your course around specific learning goals--whether you're teaching something new or tweaking a course you've offered before. If you determine early in the planning process what you ultimately want students to take away from the course, you can choose readings, create exams and paper assignments, and structure in-class activities in ways that all align tightly with those central goals. 

Here are a couple of online resources about applying such principles of "Backward Design" to the planning of college courses:

• Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching provides this overview of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe's influential book Understanding by Design and provides links to resources that assist instructors in applying the book's principles in their course planning.  (The full book is available electronically through the U-M library system to authenticated users.)
• In this ProfHacker blog post from The Chronicle of Higher Education, literature professor Mark Sample offers a short, simple introduction to Backward Design, discussing his shift from asking the conventional question, "What should my students read this term?" to considering instead, "What do I want them to learn?"

Fundamental to the concept of backward course design is the idea that students won't learn what you don't teach them.  If you determine up front what knowledge, skills, or habits of mind you want students to learn and how you will assess whether they have succeeded, you're more likely to spend class time and assignments offering instruction and practice that directly align with those learning goals.  

CRLT offers a range of resources to help you build or revise your syllabus on our Course Design and Planning page. As always, we're also available to consult with individual teachers about any aspect of planning, teaching, or assessing your courses.