Fink's 5 Principles of Fine Teaching . What makes a course a "good course"? After observing many classes at the University over the past two decades, Dee Fink put together this list of characteristics. Any course that has these characteristics is a "good course," no matter what else is bad about it; and vice versa.

Planning Your Course: A Decision Guide. How do you put together a good course? Putting together a course is a matter of making a series of decisions about a course. This "Planning Guide" helps a teacher work through these decisions in a systematic way. The guide also includes two forms that are helpful in this process. (Note: Additional material on this topic is available in "Tips on Teaching" in the section on "Designing a Course.")

Diagram of learning activities. What learning activities make a good set of activities? Marilla Svinicki and Nancy Dixon created this diagram some years ago. The four points of the circle represent stages in the Kolb model of learning. The activities toward the center represent more "passive" modes of learning; those near the periphery are more "active" modes. The goal is to include activities from each of the four stages of learning, and have as many from close to the periphery, i.e., more active, as possible.

Types of Information for a Course Syllabus. After you have designed the course, you need to share some information about the course and about your course design with your students. Here are our suggestions for what ought to be in a good course syllabus.

The First Day of Class: What Can/Should We Do? The 1st day of class is probably the most important day of the whole course. What you decide to do on that day affects student expectations for the rest of the semester. Here are some suggestions developed by a faculty group at OU for what to do on the 1st day of class.