If you've taught college courses in the past, you've probably designed part of or all of a course. Perhaps the brief discussion to follow is familiar to you. But the quality of pedagogical training as part of graduate education varies widely across disciplines, and for most faculty it is often helpful to revisit some basic questions about how to select and organize content in such a way that students get the most out of a course.
Perhaps you have heard of the term "instructional design." This is the process by which (in our cases) college teaching and coursework is more effective because we systematically design courses to better meet identified student needs. By "student needs" we mean what students need to learn (learning goals and objectives) and various means they may learn more effectively. Instructional design offers principles that can help instructors organize their course: what do I think is important for my students to learn? How can I build my course around these vital, central concepts or paths of exploration?