Prepare Your Course Outline

Get­ting Start­ed with Your Course

This page con­tains the essen­tial items you need to know and ref­er­ence to pre­pare your course out­line.

A course out­line may be con­sid­ered the “first impres­sion” that your stu­dents receive about you and the course they are tak­ing. Be sure to fol­low the NIC Course Out­line Pol­i­cy (3–35) for all the com­po­nents and required sec­tions. The tem­plate for a course out­line can be found on Teach Any­where, Course Out­lines page. Check with your depart­ment to ensure you’ve includ­ed all the infor­ma­tion spe­cif­ic to your area.

Think about mak­ing the course out­line as inclu­sive and wel­com­ing as pos­si­ble. This may include writ­ing in first per­son and being as inclu­sive and accom­mo­dat­ing as pos­si­ble to meet the needs of all learn­ers. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gar­y’s Tay­lor Insti­tute for Teach­ing and Learn­ing pro­vides more infor­ma­tion on this top­ic and CTLI can help as well if you want to dis­cuss fur­ther. Resource: Cre­at­ing Inclu­sive Course Out­lines

1.
AUTHORIZED COURSE DESCRIPTION (ACD)
  • All cred­it cours­es at NIC have Autho­rized Course Descrip­tions called ACDs.
  • The ACD is a doc­u­ment defin­ing the edu­ca­tion­al com­po­nents of a course, which have been approved by Edu­ca­tion Coun­cil. The edu­ca­tion­al com­po­nents in an ACD include course code, title, for­mat, cred­it val­ue, lev­el, pre­req­ui­sites/­co-req­ui­sites, course descrip­tion, con­tent, learn­ing out­comes, eval­u­a­tion meth­ods, and min­i­mum instruc­tor qual­i­fi­ca­tions.
  • All sec­tions of the course must adhere to the com­po­nents as list­ed in the ACD for that course. ACDs align NIC’s cours­es with trans­fer require­ments or cur­ricu­lum man­dat­ed by exter­nal bod­ies.
  • Resource: Find your ACD on NIC’s inter­nal list­ing of all Autho­rized Course Descrip­tions — Share­Point page (NIC log in required if off-cam­pus)
  • Resource: Your job is to trans­late the con­tent con­tained in your ACDs into the NIC Course Out­line Tem­plate - a course out­line con­tains a bit more infor­ma­tion and details about the course in addi­tion to ACD mate­r­i­al.
2.
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT (Evaluation)
  • Be clear and upfront with stu­dents about how they will be grad­ed on their demon­stra­tions of learn­ing. The course out­line must con­tain essen­tial details on the assign­ments, tests, projects and oth­er forms of eval­u­a­tion.
  • Eval­u­a­tion involves a for­mal review of stu­dents’ work to deter­mine how well they’ve met learn­ing out­comes.
  • Eval­u­a­tion usu­al­ly means assign­ing a grade or val­ue to the learn­ing object based on the qual­i­ty of the work.
  • Resource: Ref­er­ence Teach Any­where Page — 20 Fair, Clear and Sim­ple Ideas for Assess­ing Learn­ing
  • Resource: Con­sid­er “how much is enough” in terms of eval­u­at­ing learn­ers (more is not nec­es­sar­i­ly bet­ter): Eval­u­at­ing Learn­ers: How Much is Enough?
  • Resource: Instruc­tors should ensure their eval­u­a­tions align with course out­comes and prin­ci­ples of qual­i­ty eval­u­a­tion: Teach Any­where Web­page: Prin­ci­ples of Assess­ment and Exam­ples
3.
COURSE OUTLINE RELATED POLICy
  • Make sure your course out­line fol­lows key poli­cies at NIC relat­ed to align­ing course out­lines with ACDs, fol­low­ing the grade scale, and prop­er­ly sched­ul­ing your assess­ments.
  • Resource: Pol­i­cy 3–33 Eval­u­a­tion of Stu­dent Per­for­mance
    • Prin­ci­ple #3: Eval­u­a­tion of stu­dent per­for­mance will be aligned with course learn­ing out­comes and is inclu­sive of diverse learn­ing needs.
      • Pro­ce­dure #1: The student’s final grade for a course must be com­prised of a min­i­mum of three eval­u­a­tive com­po­nents with no sin­gle eval­u­a­tion worth more than 40%.
      • Pro­ce­dure #2: Eval­u­a­tions should be var­ied to ensure stu­dents can meet the course learn­ing out­comes.
    • Prin­ci­ple #6: NIC sup­ports stu­dent suc­cess by not per­mit­ting eval­u­a­tions worth more than 10% of their final grade to be assigned in the last week of class­es.
      • Pro­ce­dure #6: Eval­u­a­tions total­ing more than 10% of the final grade may be due in the last week of instruc­tion as long as they were assigned pri­or to the final week of class­es. Nor­mal­ly, assign­ments will not be due lat­er than the last day of class­es.
    • Prin­ci­ple #4: Stu­dents must receive ade­quate feed­back (nor­mal­ly a min­i­mum of 20% of the total grade) in advance of the aca­d­e­m­ic with­draw­al date for their pro­gram.
4.
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
  • Assess­ment (or for­ma­tive assess­ment) involves pro­vid­ing stu­dents with oppor­tu­ni­ties to under­stand how they’re doing in their learn­ing.
  • For­ma­tive assess­ment is dif­fer­ent from eval­u­a­tion in that it’s infor­mal and intend­ed to sup­port stu­dent devel­op­ment.
  • Fac­ul­ty should aim to offer many for­ma­tive assess­ment activ­i­ties in their cours­es to give stu­dents mul­ti­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to receive feed­back on their learn­ing.
  • Resource: Teach Any­where Page — Class­room Assess­ment Tech­niques (CATs)
  • Resource: Review Teach Any­where Page: Prin­ci­ples of Assess­ment and Exam­ples
5.
LEARNING ACTIVITIES
  • Learn­ing activ­i­ties encom­pass all the things stu­dents will do in a course to acquire the skills and meet the course learn­ing out­comes, includ­ing the prepa­ra­tion work, in-class or online tasks, assess­ments and eval­u­a­tions.
  • Learn­ing activ­i­ties should be inten­tion­al and geared toward help­ing stu­dents to meet learn­ing out­comes.
  • Con­sid­er adding a chart out­lin­ing each learn­ing out­come and the aligned assess­ment and learn­ing activ­i­ties to show stu­dents con­nec­tions and mean­ing for their work.
6.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
  • A learn­ing out­come is a state­ment that iden­ti­fies the knowl­edge, skills, and attrib­ut­es stu­dents will learn in a par­tic­u­lar les­son, course, or pro­gram.
  • Learn­ing out­comes focus on what the stu­dent will be able to demon­strate.
  • Fac­ul­ty should start plan­ning their cours­es with the ACD approved learn­ing out­comes in mind and build oth­er parts of the course from there.
  • Resource: Teach Any­where Page: Learn­ing Out­comes (new learn­ing out­comes can be cre­at­ed after a course has run and approved through gov­er­nance process­es)
7.
POLICIES
8.
Learning Strategies
  • Help stu­dents learn how to learn by point­ing out key learn­ing strate­gies that will help with the discipline/subject area
  • Point stu­dents to six evi­dence-based strate­gies that will help them with learn­ing how to be an effec­tive learn­er.
  • Resource: Learn Any­where Resource Page (includ­ing 6 key): Learn­ing Strate­gies
  • Resource: Learn Any­where Resource Page: Tips for Dig­i­tal Learn­ing