Posts Tagged ‘course design’

The Role of the Text in Course Planning

Posted Monday, June 14th, 2010 by Maryellen Weimer

As you plan a new course or revise an existing one, when do you decide on a text? I worry that many of us make that decision early on and then use the text to anchor our course design decisions. What gets included in the course as well as how it’s presented are often strongly influenced by what’s in the text and how it’s presented there. As the authors below point out, that’s not the role the text should be assuming in course planning.

What Should be Standardized?

Posted Thursday, September 17th, 2009 by Maryellen Weimer

I was reading an article that describes the attempts of a marketing department to standardize the various sections of an introductory principles of marketing course. What caught my attention and has been following me around since I read it is this: “In all sections students must pass the exams for the course regardless of their grades on other assignments for the class. This keeps students from using group projects to raise their grades.” (p. 12)