Developing a Course Map for Your Online Course

How do I begin to plan my online course?

Like Matt Fajkus' concept diagram of the Tree House provides a holistic vision for the house, creating a course map provides a blueprint for envisioning what you want your students to learn and be able to do by the end of your class. Whether you're teaching face-to-face or online, creating a course map offers a clear sense of the purpose of your course, which will prove useful while designing, building and delivering the course. 

To design an entire course, you will need to ask these three questions:

1. What do you want students to learn and be able to do as a result of your class (big ideas and student understandings)?
2. What are the best ways to measure whether they have actually learned (assessing learning outcomes)?
3. How will students acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (activities and content)?

The process begins with big ideas, which will shape the way students think about a subject and develop skills and values related to the discipline. From these big ideas emerge student understandings, which bridge the abstract to the concrete and measurable learning outcomes that describe specifically what students will know and be able to do. In short, we want students to be able to do something with the knowledge they are learning in our courses. Once we have the learning outcomes, we figure out how we will know whether they have learned and to what degree (summative assessments) and what learning activities will help them practice using the knowledge and develop the desired skills and attitudes.

How do I create a course map for my online course?

Just as you would with your face-to-face class, start with thinking of some "big ideas" that are central to your course. For example, a big idea in a biology course is,“Structure relates to function.”

From there, develop student understandings, which are the knowledge, skills, or attitudes that are associated with learning the "big idea" and may not always be explicit, but are intrinsic to your course. To help you clarify student understandings, ask yourself:

• What knowledge and concepts are essential for understanding the big idea?
• What skills and ways of thinking will students need to develop?
• Which attitudes and values will help students appreciate how the big idea fits within the subject?

Understandings usually follow the format:

Knowledge: "At the end of the course, students should understand that __________." 

      e.g. "Students should understand that cell membranes are selectively permeable barriers."

Skill: "At the end of the course, students should understand how to __________."

      e.g. "Students should understand how to apply the process of science."

Attitude: "At the end of the course, students should understand the value of _________."

      e.g. "Students should understand the value of science to society."

---

AOC Additional Resources

Please explore these curated sets of resources for more ideas and possibilities as related to online course design. 

Tools and Technologies (Canvas Training Center)   Readings and Resources   Unit 1 Worksheet Download Unit 1 Worksheet