Objectives in the Course Map

Today, I made a bit of progress on my American Government Course Map. Now, it is important to note that this is something one works on over time, so don't let it seem overwhelming. Ideally, you would start out with your objectives. The nice part about the objectives is that it shouldn't be much work on your part. 


Course Level Objectives - you should have these from your Syllabus or from the Course Outline on file at your college from when the course went through the course approval process. The course I am teaching went through the course approval process in the early 1990's and the outcomes were not measurable.  So, I tweaked them slightly to be measurable.  I pasted the objectives at the top of my course map and numbered them.


Course Topics - I took the topical outline from the approved course outline as well. I pasted these topics, one per row, in the the first column of the course map and added the heading "Course Topic". This wasn't in the template, but I found organizing things by topic easier to wrap my head around. The 


Module Level Outcomes - this is the thing you are least likely to have on hand, but should be relatively easy to find.  If you have a textbook, there is a good chance that there are chapter objectives at the beginning of each chapter. Those are a fabulous starting point for your module level objectives. 


However, as you may recall, I'm not planning to use a textbook for this class. Since I have not taught it in several years, I don't even have any old American Government texts laying around. I will hit up some colleagues next week to look at what they use, but in the meantime, I found some other starting points to use. I found a Moodle Course on American Government.  (Cautionary note - even though the heading says Open Access, the copyright notice at the end says "All Rights Reserved" - not open.)  I also found the outline for McGraw Hill's American Government text. The chapter objectives are there and are a nice starting point for my module level outcomes.  I'm just using these as inspiration and will be developing the actual module level outcomes as I go along.


I pasted those in, row by row, putting the module objectives under the appropriate topic.  The next step is to map the objectives. That means to note which course level objectives are met by the student achieving the module level objective. For example, when a student is able to "describe the nature of democratic government" they are moving towards meeting several course level objectives, including "Explain the concepts and themes of American Government". Since this is outcome #1, I put a #1 in the Course Outcomes column. I also added the other relevant outcome numbers in that column.


After all of the module level outcomes are mapped, I'll start the real fun - finding the content that helps the students learn the outcomes. In other words, looking for my open source textbook or its equivalent.


I should note, in all honesty, that I am a little behind. I should have done this course mapping in the first week and worked on the syllabus during the second week. We move on to reviewing content in the third week (good grief - week 3 already?!?). I'll have a quick look at my syllabus tomorrow and try to get us back on track. Have a look at the handy new To Do List to see it all in one place.


Resources:


Blank Course Map

Course Design To Do List - I'm keeping a list, with handy links to the relevant