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Tips on Preliminary
Steps:
- Check program audit or
curriculum revision documents to see what is indicated about the
course you are about to develop or revise.
- Meet with your facilitator
and begin to establish a working relationship early in the process.
- Get course development
guidelines from your facilitator. Also, ask him or her for copies of
appropriate exemplary courses.
- Consider who the audiences
for your course document will be: e.g., colleagues, Department Head,
the Deans and Vice-President for Academic Affairs, future
instructors, external constituencies.
- Think about what kinds of
processes you want student taking the course to be engaged in. This
will help in generating activities and assignments for the course,
and may affect which course development model you decide to use.
- Set up a regular
appointment with your facilitator. Settle on a time frame for your
project. Plan to write in stages, if possible, at regular intervals.
Tips
on Writing:
- Try to get some words on
paper as soon as possible to begin the process. You need not write
the sections in order, in fact, many course developers find it best
to start writing the section(s) which they are more excited.
- Use language for an intelligent
but uninformed lay audience; later, read the draft you have written
from the point of view of a non-expert outsider.
- Avoid highly specialized
jargon whenever possible. For technical terms and acronyms, either
provide brief parenthetical definitions or append a glossary to your
document.
- Feedback and revision is a
normal part of the writing process. Expect rewrites.
- Check for consistency with
relevant audits or curriculum documents, guidelines from
accreditation groups, the College's Mission Statement, catalog, and
documents for subsequent courses.
- If you are using the
objectives-based model, make sure the objectives are consistent with
the course goals and are consistent throughout the document.
- Check to see that the other
elements (e.g., catalog description) of your course proposal are
consistent with the rationales and course structure sections.
- Make sure your sample
syllabus (or sample syllabi), including the announced grading
system, is consistent with the rest of your document, for example,
the student assessment section. (Refer syllabus guidelines in the
course development models.)
- Specify how lecture, lab,
and clinical/practicum hours each will be utilized. Check to see
that credit hours are distributed correctly.
Process
Tips:
- Keep your Department
Chairperson involved in the process; share an early draft.
- If appropriate, talk with
instructors or writers of prerequisite and subsequent courses to
insure curricular coherence.
- Keep notes from each
meeting with your facilitator.
- To avoid possible
confusion, label each revised draft and its corresponding computer
file with the correct date.
- If the course is being
developed by a team, name someone as the lead writer. That person
can collate and edit team contributions into a single draft, copies
of which are shared with the team as the project progresses.
- Review current Library
holdings; cite some or all of these in your document and use this
opportunity to identify important new materials to support the
course.
- Study technology needs and
opportunities for the course. The staff in the Academic Computing
Department is available to you as a resource. If your course uses
technology to a significant degree, send your first full draft to
Academic Computing for review.
- Consider ways to incorporate
ethical issues into your course.
- Consider if and how your
course could be offered in a variety of formats
Style
Tips:
- Make the determination of
the students' final grades as explicit as possible.
- Please make capitals,
terminology, etc., consistent throughout the document.
- Underline or italicize the
title of books.
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