Course Design

At Sentara College of Health Sciences, all of our courses are either online or hybrid/blended. Regardless of the modality of the course you are teaching, sound course design is based on the model you see depicted in this image. This model can be applied to program goals, course goals, and weekly goals. Always begin with Student Learning Outcomes. What will students be able to "do" after they complete the program, course, or week? Remember:

Always start with learning outcomes
Determine
- instructional materials
- application activities
- collaboration and interactivity that will meet those outcomes
Give constructive feedback and assessment that tie in the learning outcomes with the materials, application activities, and the collaboration and interaction. Be sure that students understand the connection.

OnlineIn our online classes, all instruction is delivered in a web-based learning environment.

Hybrid or BlendedIn our hybrid or blended learning classes, a portion of the traditional face-to-face component is replaced by web-based learning. Teachers deliver content online via our lecture capture tool. Students are expected to apply the knowledge that they learned online during the face-to-face class.

This Guide for Tracking Required Course Credit Time was developed to help teachers understand how to deliver instruction in order to meet accreditation standards for hybrid courses.
Course Rigor Job Aid

Course Design Guiding Standards

Universal Design for Learning UDL

UDL is a course design framework for learning. Consisting of three principles, its primary purpose is to maximize opportunities for learning for all students to increase student success. Some areas of importance:

UDL helps ensure we are meeting the needs of our increasingly diverse population.
It can help improve accessibility to courses and content for all learners.
Contributes to the overall success of all learners in our programs.

Explore the UDL guidelines here at the CAST.org website.

You can investigate UDL and the ways to employ the framework in your course instruction by completing the faculty development module linked here.

Quality Matters (QM)

Based on research-supported and published best practices, the QM Rubric for Higher Education is a set of standards used to review the design of online and blended courses. The rubric is complete with annotations explaining the standards' application and the relationship among them.

Sentara College of Health Sciences currently does not participate in reviews by a QM team but has two trained QM Coordinators on the CETL team. The QM coordinators conduct in-house reviews of courses each semester using the QM Rubric 7th Edition. The review is conducted to identify areas in courses where QM standards are met and identify opportunities for improvement in others. Click here to see a list of the standards. Your CETL QM Coordinators are Norma Bonney and Tina Evans.

The SCOHS library has a full copy of the QM Rubric for Higher Education, 7th Edition, with annotations and an explanation of scoring you can check out and review. Additional information can also be found at:

The Meeting Quality Matters Standards faculty development module in the LMS.
The MyQM website. Login here. (Don't have a login? You can create one using your sentara.edu email.)

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