When teachers "put together" their courses, they are in essence designing learning experiences for others. That is, they are making choices and decisions about the kinds of experiences that learners will and will not have in a given course. If they decide to make the course primarily a lecture course, the students will experience lectures and not small group discussions. If the teacher decides to make small group work a central feature of the course, students will experience small group discussions more than lectures.

The challenge facing a teacher who wants to implement higher level learning is how to make the kinds of decisions needed to promote this special kind of learning. And in order to make the right kinds of decisions, the teacher will need a better understanding of what is involved in the course design process.

Typical Approach: "List of Topics"
What do professors usually do when they put together a course. The most common approach is the "Topics" approach. Beginning a few months or a few weeks before the first meeting of the course the professor will select a textbook and prepare a list of the important topics on the subject of the course. Then they prepare a series of lectures on these topics. Following this, they decide on some homework assignments, plan two midterms and a final, and they are finished with their "design of the course."
 

This approach is good in terms of being relatively easy for the professor to implement. But it is clearly focused on the structure of the subject and pays little or no attention to other important aspects of the educational process, e.g., the kind of student learning desired.

Alternative Approach: "Designing Learning Experiences for Others"
There is a more systematic approach to the challenge of designing learning experiences for others, whether the teaching is being done in a college classroom, in a corporate training program, a community development project, or wherever. The following description of the Design Approach is intended to offer teachers a model of instructional design that has three advantages. It is relatively simple, it portends to be comprehensive, and it is integrated. (Footnote: Although there are many books and handbooks on college teaching, only a few offer a focused view of the course or instructional design process itself. Two that do are: W.H. Bergquist, 1981; R. H. Diamond, 1998. The model presented here is certainly consistent with the main views of these prior statements, and try to build on them.) Figure 1 identifies the four basic
elements of this model.

The box ("Situational Factors) represents information that needs to be gathered; the three circles represent key kinds of decisions that the teacher needs to make.

In the design process, the teacher needs to.

Let me comment in more detail about each of these key elements.

Situational Factors
This refers to any aspect of the learning situation that might present significant challenges and opportunities for the teacher. There are four aspects those teachers and instructional designers often find important.

B. Nature of the Subject. This refers to such things as whether the general nature of the subject is convergent (working toward a single right answer) or divergent (working towards multiple, equally valid interpretations); whether it is primarily cognitive or includes the learning of significant physical skills as well; whether it is highly abstract or very concrete and practical; etc. It is sometimes also important to note whether a particular field of study is relatively stable or in a period of rapid change, or whether competing paradigms are challenging each other at the moment.

C. Characteristics of the Learner. Students vary among themselves in important ways: prior familiarity with and knowledge of the subject, initial feelings (e.g., joy, fear) about the subject, study skills, as well as differences in learning styles which have been the subject of much educational research.

D. Characteristics of the Teacher. The teacher is a frequently overlooked variable in the teaching/learning process. But when making choices about the course design, teachers should consider (a) their own beliefs about teaching and learning (i.e., their teaching philosophy), (b) the kinds and level of passion of feelings they have about students, about the subject, and about the process of learning, (c) the level and kinds of teaching skills they have or don't (yet) have, and even (d) their relative knowledge and familiarity with the subject (yes, sometimes we are in a situation where we have to teach a course about which we are not highly knowledgeable).

Goals. The goals need to be clear, of course. But more than that, they need to address learning needs that are important and significant, not trite or pedestrian. To draw an imaginary example from my own teaching background, if I were teaching a course on world geography, I could formulate a goal that all students would memorize the capitals and products of the 200 most important countries in the world. Such goals would be very clear and very challenging (even for the professor). But they would not meet the test of being significant and important. This is where the previously described concept of higher level learning is so important. In order for the goals of any course to be "good," they should presumably address some kind of higher level learning, something more than just the foundation level of learning.

Teaching and Learning Activities. Once a good set of learning goals have been developed, then a teacher can make decisions about what kinds of teaching and learning activities are needed. (Note: The "Teaching activities" refer to what the teacher does, e.g., present a lecture or lead a discussion. The "Learning activities" refer to what the student or learner does, e.g., take notes on a lecture or participate in a discussion.) There are a number of criteria for what constitutes good teaching and learning activities. The most important criterion is the ability of the learning activity to promote the specific kinds of learning state in the goals for the course.

Although this may seem like something that happens automatically, it is not. One widespread example of a problem is this area is when professors say one of their important goals is to "get students to think about this subject." However when I look at what learning activities are actually being used, these same professors are often using straight lectures as the primary teaching/learning activities, where students have little opportunity to practice their thinking skills and even less feedback on these skills--until exam time.

Related to the issue of connecting teaching/learning activities to goals is the importance of using active learning. To the degree that a teacher does have goals that involve higher level learning, then it seem imperative that they also use the principles of active learning when they select the teaching/learning activities they plan to use. I cannot imagine a way in which students can achieve higher level learning through passive learning.
In addition to the central criteria of being connected to the goals and of including active learning, good teaching/learning activities should also be activities that:

NOTE:
More specific ideas about each of the three decision areas of instructional design are found in the associated webpages on:

Bergquist, William H., Gould, Ronald A., Greenberg, Elinor Miller. 1981. Designing Undergraduate Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Diamond, R.M. 1998. Designing and Assessing Courses and Curricula: A Practical Guide. Rev. ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.