Course design is the conscious and deliberate planning of what you and your students do in your course. Course design is crucial for good university teaching. Without intentional planning, the only way that pedagogical strategies backed by sound evidence are incorporated into your courses would be by chance, intuition, or tradition. But no student learning should be left to chance or common practices that are simply not evidence-informed. Such careful planning can also make life much easier for you by overcoming the many stressors that you endure as an educator in your courses. Some key questions to be tackled when you undertake course design include:

• What are your students’ gaps in relation to the knowledge, skills, and attributes they should ideally have?
• How will what you and your students do in your course help close these gaps?
• How will the activities and assessments that students do in your course help them become more engaged in the subject matter than they would otherwise be?
• How might you sequence these activities and assessments to maximise student engagement and learning?

In summary, the course design process involves putting together a transparent blueprint of your course (Hansen, 2011).

Related resources:

• How do I plan and design a course?
• How do I achieve constructive alignment in my courses?
• What should I include in a course syllabus?
• Join the Course Design Institute