Project: Course Design

Project: Course Design

Working in higher education, you will often be asked to contribute to new degree program creation or revision. To be able to understand this process, you have started with learning about how to communicate and collaborate in higher education, and you have also learned the roles of the people involved in the curricular and programmatic development process. Now, you will take that knowledge and begin to construct parts of a mini degree program of your own.

Part 1: Domains and Competencies

First, choose a content area that has learning standards and a specialized professional association. An area such as Education or History. Your next step will be to locate the most current standards for initial licensure programs. Those standards cover the content of an entire degree program in that area. You will only develop a portion of a degree for this course, so please choose ONLY one standard. Your standard may have several competencies underneath it. This is typical.

Take the standard and write one domain for your program. Next, develop three(3) competencies that students must master in order to achieve the goal of that domain. In further topics, you will develop activities, assessments, lesson plans, and syllabi to go with this domain and its competencies.

Part 2: Reflection

a. Reflect on the domain, as well as and how you decided on the competencies aligned with it, in 150 words.

b. Why did you chose the particular standard from which to build?  How are you going to use this in your future professional practice?

Now that you have a domain with some competencies that you derived from your SPA standards, go back and look at the standards document as a whole. List the standards met next to the domain and competencies.

c. Submit one document with both the domain and the competencies and reflection on it.

*Note: For example, if you met the International Literacy Association (ILA) Standard 2, competency 4 with a specific competency you’ve written, you’d write (ILA 2.4) next to the competency. Often, you will find that the competencies you developed meet more than one standard/competency in the overall standards document. Please list all of the standards you have met and refine the language of your domain/competency document. You may find that if you change a word or two, you will be able to cover more standards/competencies.

Part 3: Syllabus

Describe three activities a faculty member could facilitate that would help students be able to master your competencies from Part 1. Make sure that at least one competency is covered with each activity. You can cover a competency more than one time. At this point, you are only describing the activities. You do not need to create the materials to go with those activities  (handouts, templates, presentations, etc.

Using the syllabus template, your goal is to complete a syllabus for the course you have been working on that incorporates the lesson you developed. It is up to you whether you want this course to be delivered in a traditional, online, or hybrid setting.

Your completed syllabus should include:

1.  Course title, description, and textbook
2.  Three competencies from the program design this course will meet
3.  Eight topics, with each topic having

• One measurable objectives aligned to academic standards.
• Suggested readings from textbook and/or other sources (include links to articles or websites you would like them to review)
• Description of the assignment, activity, or assessment (you will make use of the two formative and one summative assessment you created)
• One or two discussion questions for the students to answer either face to face or online

4.  Grading Scale and point allocation for assignments.

5.  Two Formative Assessments, aligned to the topic level objectives (these should be described in the topics and attached to the end of the syllabus).

6.  One Summative Assessment, aligned to the program level competencies (this should be described in the topic and attached to the end of the syllabus).

Note: On the website for your SPA, type SPA assessments into the search engine. There, you will typically find five to eight types of assessments deemed acceptable for your content area. If you use information from other sources to create your assessment, please cite appropriately. In-text citations and references should be presented using APA documentation guidelines.

Part 4: Reflection 

a. Write a 200-word analysis on the collaborative process of developing curriculum.

b. In 300-words, reflect of the process you went through to obtain curricular alignment. What worked well and what would you change the next time you have to look at alignment? How would you use this in your future professional practice?

c. Submit your analysis and reflection, and completed syllabus as one deliverable

You are required to submit this assignment to Turn-It-In.