Tips for Newcomers in Course Design/Development/Implementation

Remember the basics and plan ahead for your activities

Set up a timeline for your course and use this as a basis for planning all of your activities (e.g., if you know your course starts on x date, when do you need to get your syllabus finished; if you have a lecture on x date and have extra handouts, when do staff need these to get them copied for you?) We have developed a generic "best practices" timeline to assist with this process. Timeline for Administering a Course

Always be able to answer the following questions about your activities:

[Who/What/Where/When/How/Why]

Who

• Who has done this before: Identify a mentor
  • Who has run courses before that can give me advice (this is especially important for course support staff; there is no need to reinvent the wheel for each course because though each course is different, other staff members are valuable sources of experience/information/advice).
• Identify who is responsible for each planning step for your course:
  • Syllabus development
  • Lining up faculty members
  • Room reservations
  • Communication of information to students
  • Small group assignments

What

• What are your learning objectives/what are you trying to accomplish through this activity?
• What actions need to be taken to make this run smoothly and be a good learning experience

Where

• How does everyone know where to report (large and small group activities)?
• How do people know where to park (this is key when you are planning to have people go to other hospitals)?
• Where do handouts need to get to be given out to students (e.g., lecture hall , PBL rooms)?

When

• How does everyone know when to report?
• When do you need to work with Miner Library to set up work on Prometheus for your students?

How

• This webpage hopefully answers most of the how questions, but we are sure that there are many more you can think of. Please ask; we will try our best to help you think through what you need to do.

Why

• Why is it important that this activity happens as planned? Because we are here to educate students and we are here to help you!