Starting at the top of the Pyramid:

Course design begins with two essential questions: what will the students gain from this class and how does the course design support this. This strategy of course design (often referred to as backwards design) helps instructors develop courses that have a clear and directed purpose and plan. I have designed and created many biology courses at the Community College level and have found that the most difficult courses to design are those that have the goal of developing critical thinking and analysis skills. Designing courses with this end in mind often requires creative and innovative strategies.

One such innovative strategy is to begin with highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy (“create”) as a means to help students develop deeper understanding of the content. There are a number of different course design approaches that make use of this strategy. One design approach is using the act of developing and writing a textbook as the mechanism for learning. I began thinking about this approach to course design when I was involved in writing my first Open Educational Resource (OER).

I was part of a group of instructors from across the country who used Google docs to collaboratively write a textbook. This resulted in many fascinating discussions about what content is truly essential and how best to explain and connect topics. I realized that these types of questions arise organically from the writing process and are an excellent way to help students learn the material. The process of developing and designing an introductory text will require students to synthesize material from various sources and think about how best to present this material.

I suggest maintaining traditional testing methodologies for this course. This will allow the measurement of student learning before and after the new course design in a format that is both consistent and understandable to a variety of faculty. Based on preliminary data this learning strategy results in similar test grades but a significant increase in student engagement. This is important because it is the appreciation for the topic and desire to continue learning about it that is key for General Education students.