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Step 1: Evaluate goals for the course

What are the key experiences you expect students to have in the course?
  1. Examples include (i) having the experience of writing a substantial paper with at least two cycles of revision that have peer and/or instructor feedback; (ii) having students analyze/solve a situation/problem in a group; (iii) analyze a set of data using particular methods.
  2. Identify core experiences to focus on and determine which ones translate directly to a remote environment and which need to be modified for remote instruction.
What are the key things you expect students to be able to do at the end of the course?
  1. There are many ways to think about this, but it has been common to categorize these as standard competencies around critical thinking, complex problem solving, independent learning, working in diverse teams, written and oral communication, and quantitative and information literacy. These all have discipline specific definitions, sub-categories, and other ways to categorize what students should be able to do.
  2. Identify the core competencies for your course, especially in light of the full curriculum students will be taking.
  3. Are there new competencies students are mastering in the remote environment that are in place of ones that are most relevant in-person?
What are the key things you expect students to know at the end of the course?
  1. This is not about student’s memorizing “facts”. Instead, each discipline has its equivalent of “content knowledge” that students are expected to have learned about well-enough that they can look it up in the future when they need to.
  2. For any individual course, the amount of content we cover tends to grow over time. This is natural. Reflecting on what constitutes the critical core content a course is particularly important in a remote environment, but useful for the return to in-person instructions as well.

For simplicity, in many documents these will be referred to as “course outcomes” or “learning objectives”.