Predesign

Course design begins by understanding the learning background and experience of the students who will enroll in the course, and then identifying how the course fits with overall academic program outcomes and competencies, the curriculum framework, and core concepts and competencies to be threaded within courses. During the predesign stage, faculty also should review, as needed, prerequisite, concurrent, or other courses if the course being developed is a part of a sequence. If the course has been taught previously, student course evaluations can provide additional insight for course development.

Prior to writing course outcomes, faculty also should review recommendations from national health care organizations; influential reports with recommendations for nursing education; and nursing organizations that make recommendations about essential competencies, concepts, and content as they relate to the course being developed. State and national accrediting agencies may also have prescriptive statements about course content and credit hour allocation.

Course objectives, outcomes, and competencies

Course objectives, outcomes, and competencies are derived from end-of-program (terminal) and program-level (year or semester) outcomes and indicate what students should know, be able to do, and value at the end of the course, and how they will be evaluated and graded. Although faculty use terms in different ways, Wittman-Price & Fasolka (2010) suggest that the term learning outcome (as opposed to the term objective) is less restrictive and more appropriate in a learner-centered environment. Regardless of the term used, these “behavioral indicators” activate the curriculum, direct the choice of learning materials, guide the development of learning activities, and communicate to students what they are expected to learn and how they will be evaluated. Course learning objectives, outcomes, and competencies therefore must be written at appropriate levels of learning domains, for relevance to clinical practice, to be easily understood by students, and to guide evaluation of attainment.

Course concepts and content

Once learning outcomes are written, faculty can make decisions about the concepts and content to include in the course. Typically, faculty are selected to develop and teach courses because of their expertise with the content, and may be inclined to include all that is known about the subject; however, they also must design the course to fit within the curriculum and the level of practice for which the student is being prepared.

To prevent having a course burdened by content, Candela et al. (2006) recommend developing a process for making decisions about which content to retain and suggest including only content that is essential to meet program and course outcomes, that is required for safe practice, that needs to be reinforced and practiced, that is included in curriculum recommendations from professional nursing organizations, and that cannot be accessed easily when needed. Others (Davis, 2010; Diamond, 2008) recommend distinguishing between essential and optional material, considering core concepts versus details, and including only those topics relevant to practice or common existing problems. If the course is a part of a concept-based curriculum, the course designer must thread concepts and other broad outcomes and competencies, such as patient safety, communication, health information technology, or collaboration and teamwork, into the course (Giddens & Brady, 2007).

Organizing the concepts and content

Once core concepts and content are established, the next step is to organize them into units or lessons of related material. Courses can be organized in a variety of ways: using a logical sequence from beginning to end (for example, across the life span); following a sequential process (for example, the management process); by complexity (from simple to complex or from concrete to abstract); using a body systems approach; or, in the instance of case-based or problem-based learning, by inquiry about a particular problem. Regardless of how the concepts and content are organized, the structure should be evident to students and be consistent throughout the course.

Units and lessons

By organizing the course into smaller units of study (modules, units, lessons), faculty provide additional direction for learning. For each unit or lesson, faculty should state the purpose, outcomes, assignments, learning activities, and evaluation strategies; this level of detail is particularly helpful for online or hybrid courses to provide necessary boundaries for unit or lesson activities (Chapter 23). Time limits must be considered when determining units of study; the time spent should be in proportion to the relative significance of the concepts and content and the students’ ability to learn the material.

Learning activities

Learning activities are selected to assist students in acquiring course learning outcomes (Chapter 11). They should be selected to provide opportunity for developing higher-order thinking and clinical decision-making skills (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2010). Learning activities help students to synthesize content and concepts in context and connect the classroom to clinical practice (Benner et al., 2010). Learning activities should build from course to course, level to level, and be threaded throughout the course as they fit with the level and program outcomes. Learning activities can be designed to be completed as required assignments or as optional, supplemental, or remedial activities and can take place in class or be assigned as class preparation. Faculty should indicate how the learning activities will be used in the syllabus and provide information about how students will be given feedback or evaluated and graded.

Textbooks and other learning resources

Faculty who are designing (or redesigning) courses have responsibility for choosing the course learning materials. These should be selected after faculty have determined the course outcomes, concepts and content, and learning activities. Students can also participate in the selection of learning materials, and faculty should design the course with sufficient options for students to choose resources that will meet their own learning needs.

When choosing learning materials, faculty should consider how these materials will align with course outcomes, fit with the course design, mirror faculty philosophy, and support students’ learning needs. Faculty also should give careful consideration to how course materials will be used, for example, in class as a resource or as assigned readings as background for class participation. Faculty should avoid assigning excessive amounts of readings that do not respect the principle of effective use of time on task.

In many courses textbooks and other reading materials are the primary source of information. Beeson and Aucoin (2005) recommend that faculty focus on assigning essential content and focused reading assignments and building on the information from these readings during class.

Most textbook publishers offer ancillary study resources and web links, often at an additional cost. In one small study, researchers found that electronic textbook companion resources were not well used and that if faculty required students to purchase them, they should orient students to the materials available and integrate them into course learning activities (Missildine, Fountain, & Summers, 2009).

Another option for textbooks and readings is to create a custom-designed course pack with readings that include selected chapters from textbooks and reprints of required journal articles that are pertinent to the course. These can be deployed from publisher websites or to handheld devices or e-readers. Other faculty create course packs for print production or use e-reserve systems at the university library.

Regardless of the type and amount of course material, faculty must make course materials easy for students to access, provide directions about how and when to use them, and explain how the materials relate to course concepts and the evaluation and grading plan. This information should be included in writing in the syllabus.

Evaluation and grading plan

The final step of course design is to determine how student learning will be evaluated and how grades will be calculated and assigned (Chapters 16 and 25). Where possible, students should be able to choose among several options with regards to how their work will be evaluated and graded. The evaluation plan should be included in the syllabus to inform students of when and how evaluation will take place.