In coming to this resource, you might have arrived here from one of several contexts:
- attended a workshop or seminar series sponsored by CEI
- completed a teaching in higher education course using learning-centered design
- accepted a position at a new institution emphasizing teaching for learning
- working to design a course in a new format or learning space
- preparing to teach an undergrad or grad course for the first time
- imagining something entirely new given shifts in higher education
Given these multiple possibilities - in pedagogical, personal, public, and professional contexts - we’ve designed the Aligned Course and Syllabus Design resource to offer more than a document template with a pre-determined organization or a checklist outline to be followed.
Some suggestions, then, for using this resource mindfully and iteratively. Rather than trying to take it all in and becoming overwhelmed in the process, we’re suggesting possible “small sips.”
- For a “Quick Start” guide as you update a syllabus with small changes, you might draw on the 4As Framework overview and the Deeper Dive Resources share on the Home webpage.
- If you’re familiar with backward course design, you might move to the four Syllabus Activities. Each Syllabus Activity is organized to be an adaptable, agile outline that sets out purposes for and practice to advance your work in creating a learning-centered syllabus.
- If you have been asked to follow a template with suggested text and/or a checklist for organizing the content, then you might draw on suggestions for addressing students as your primary audience by consulting the resources embedded in “Syllabus Activity #1: Draft a Reflective Course Memo” webpage, and “Syllabus Activity #2 - Draft the 1st Narrative Pages webpage” webpage .
- For instructors who are new to it all, our suggestion is to review the webpages dedicated to each of the 4As, and to draw on resources set out in Syllabus Activity #2 webpage with its focus on course learning aims and writing for learners as the document’s primary audience.
- If you’ve been given advance notice about starting a new course or have been thinking it’s (a good) time to update a course and syllabus you’ve been teaching for awhile, you might set up a mini-course on your own or with a colleague or as work among department peers to read and work through each 4A module with its companion syllabus activity.
- Whatever your context, maybe you just want to, even prefer to, review some sample syllabuses. We’ve got you covered. The “Sample Learning-Centered Syllabuses” google folder showcases examples we’ve selected to align with each of the Syllabus Activities.
A Digital Accessibility Note
Throughout this resource we’ve used a hyperlinking practice that follows ordinary expectations by linking to meaningful text to identify a resource, being descriptive and concise in naming what type of document will open, avoiding repetitive links, and providing underlined links rather than buttons.
While this site enacts each of the hyperlink principles, it is not the title of a resource that will be hyperlinked, but the brief naming of the type of document that will be opened. For example:
- A more common link would be set up in this way: In “What the Student Does: Teaching for Enhanced Learning,” John Biggs, illustrates a focus on what the student does through examples of how two prototypical students can benefit from attention to practice in learning.
- That example with our adaptation: “What the Student Does: Teaching for Enhanced Learning,” John Biggs foundational open access article, illustrates a focus on what the student does through examples of how two prototypical students can benefit from attention to practice in learning.
In the pattern we’ve using, the type of resource that will open is named, and then used as the hyperlink target. Why this change, as the author of this teaching resource, Ilene Alexander consulted with three accessibility consultants to develop a practice that would accommodate people using assistive technology such as screen readers, students with learning disabilities who identified the title hyperlinks as overwhelming distractions (“it’s like I’m supposed to open every link” one student remarked), and her own screen reading sensitivity to color and brightness.