FS629

Winter 2004

Description of Curriculum Development Project

The term project for FS629 (indeed, the overall goal of the course) is to develop the curriculum for a course that is the equivalent of one hour of college credit. This translates to about 10 hours of instructional time and about 20 hours of student learning time outside of the classroom.

The type of course you plan is up to you! It could be in the form of a series of lectures for an existing, larger course, a stand-alone laboratory module or a lab module to accompany another course, a workshop, an adult-education extension program, a unit for elementary or high school students, or even a web-based teaching module. You should choose something that will be most useful to you in terms of your future goals. One straightforward idea would be to develop a course around a research skill that you have and that other students would like to learn.

You should plan a course that you will be able to implement. This means:

1. choose a topic that is of interest to others so you can recruit students,
2. find a faculty member who will sponsor your course and serve as the "instructor of record" (in some cases this might be an extension agent or a teacher at a junior college)
3. make sure that all aspects of your curriculum plan are "do-able".

Elements of the curriculum plan: You will be developing the elements of your curriculum through the 10-week period that you are enrolled in FS629. The details of each plan will depend on the course that is being designed. What is most important is that each curriculum plan is useful. Your task is to produce a plan that you can actually use for your own teaching, not to "hand in" a rigidly defined project. Most curriculum plans should include these elements:

• Course title
• Course goal(s)
• Brief (about 2 sentences) description of the course (if this course is a component of a larger course, explain)
• Format (1 hour lecture per week for 10 weeks, or 5 hours of field study on two consecutive Saturdays, or??)
• Description of the intended audience (prerequisites, entry level skills, other details that affect the type of course and learning activities you’ve developed).
• Rationale (why are you offering this course? How does it meet the needs of your audience?)
• Description of texts or other reading materials and how they will be made available to students (student purchase, library reserve, photocopy, etc.)
• Detailed course outline broken out into units of time, activities or topics (usually it is easiest to prepare your outline based on class meeting times, but you do not have to do this if it is not appropriate for your course).

a. State the specific learning objectives that you expect to be met by each “unit” (i.e., for each class session or topic).

b. Describe the in-class learning activities (lecture, discussion, debate, etc)

c. Decribe the out-of-class learning activities, both required and optional. Insofar as possible, identify specific reading assignments or optional readings or learning resources that will be available for students for each class session or topic

d. State when assignments are assigned and when they are due. Develop brief outlines for lectures; develop descriptions for other types of learning activities).

• (Optional) Syllabus (this is an abbreviated form of the outline to share with students and others)
• Description of student assignments (if any).
• (Optional) Copies, or at least descriptions, of any handouts to be distributed to students, visual aids to use during instructional time, web pages if appropriate, computer program if appropriate.
• Plans for assessment of student learning (this may include potential exam questions or description of papers or projects to be completed) and strategy for assigning grades, if any
• (Optional) A strategy to advertise your course (this may include a copy of a poster, an announcement to post on an e-mail bulletin board, a message to place in a newsletter, etc.)