Part 2:

If You Build It, They Will Come

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

TO DO:

Read all the sections on this page and think about how they might apply to your course ideas.
Also read about What Makes a Good SGL?
Draft the course objectives for two of your ideas that you developed last week.
Explore your approach to the course: lecture, facilitated discussion, or combo.
Come up with some ideas for the sources you will use to anchor your course (book, films, articles, videos, curated website).
Draft a course description that outlines your course in an interesting way. You will likely refine this over time as you research and develop the course further. Keep in mind that the proposal form you will submit to the Curriculum Committee is limited to 250 words.
Discuss your ideas with your mentor or others. Bring up any questions that come to mind.

Creating Course Objectives

You have your idea, and you've narrowed it down into something manageable within 5 weeks. Now it's time to articulate what you want the participants to learn. Ask yourself what participants should know or able to do by the end of your course. Then draft the objectives that define what they will accomplish by participating in the course. For example, here are the objectives for this workbook:

Participants will engage in a process to design a new BOLLI course:

Generate ideas and shape concept.
Explore different class delivery models.
Create an enticing course description and objectives.
Develop and divide material into logical sessions to create a syllabus.
Engage with other prospective member SGLs in the subject and assignments.
Understand how to inspire and moderate class discussions.
Learn about the resources available for help.

By the end of this workbook, you will be ready to prepare and submit your proposal and follow your plan for course development.

Approaches to Course Development

Begin with the End in Mind

Your course objectives will guide you in course design, helping you refine your topic and eliminate material that does not support these objectives. First, you decide what you want your students to learn, be they facts, skills or theories, then you use these objectives figure out how to structure the course to get from here to there. This approach is often called Understanding by Design. Washington State University’s Center for Teaching and Learning provides an in-depth guide to course and syllabus design called "Backward Design: A Planning Framework." You may find it helpful review this guide in designing your course.

Narrative Arc Approach

Another way to approach a course is to think of it as having a narrative arc -- a sequence of topics that build upon each other to the desired end. We are all very familiar with this structure from books and movies. There should be a beginning, a middle and an end. Think of the narrative arc as a 10-day hike in the mountains. Each class takes you through different terrain to a different place, but they’re all connected, so that as you climb through the mountains you can look back to see where you’ve been and look ahead to see where your going. Using this analogy, each class builds on what you’ve learned and done together in previous classes, and hopefully by the end, when you reach the summit, there will be a synthesis where you can look back and see how all the pieces fit together. Even with a narrative arc, you will want to have course objectives. Otherwise, the hike through the mountains may never reach the top.

Choose Your Materials

Primary Source Approach

In the simplest primary source approach, you pick a primary source, such a book, play, movie or series of movies, or series of short stories. In this approach, the organization of the course is determined by whatever book or primary source you use. This is a logical way organize a literature course; the author of the work has done the organization for you, and you and the class spend time deciphering what the author may have meant. Here are examples of courses created around a single work: Joseph's Mitchell's New York and Old Crimes: Stories of Jill McCorkle.

You may also choose more than one source and compare them in some way or several sources that share common theme. This doesn’t mean that the primary source is the only material you’ll use; you may want to supplement a book with articles or even movies about the subject or author, the context in which it was written, etc. Here is an example of a thematic approach: short story course on the theme of motherhood and Representations of Female Defiance: Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea.

For non-fiction works, the primary source approach has the benefit of the author having done a lot of the organizational work for you. For example, the book The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life, has five chapters each covering a different aspect of choice (shopping, religion, romance, politics, and science). It is a perfect fit for a 5-week course. It does, however, have the drawback of presenting only the author’s point of view, so a course based on a single book could benefit from other readings that explore the subject from different perspectives. To imbue your classes with discussion, and even controversy, you may want to add other contrasting points of view to the readings. Here is an example of using one primary source supplemented with articles and videos: Private Lives of the Impressionists.

Open Source Approach

In an open source course design, you collect a wide variety of readings, websites, academic papers, and videos and you stitch the most fascinating things into a collection, which you then take the participants through. You can read books on the topic and borrow some of their organizing principles. You can also organize your collection on your own web site, which has your own summaries and links to external resources and PDFs. This approach has the benefit of flexibility and the ability to combine a wide variety of amazing things that you may have found, but it obviously will take longer to research and put together than the primary source approach.

Here are some examples of the open source approach: The Indo-Europeans and City Visions: Three Great Cities Seen Through Artists' Eyes.

Classroom Style

How would you like to deliver your course? Do you see yourself as a subject matter expert who knows a great deal about your topic and is eager to share that knowledge? Or do you see yourself as a guide or facilitator of a learning experience, with participants exploring and learning together? Maybe you envision a combination of the two. Think about how you want deliver your course - lecture, facilitated discussion, combo? In person or Zoom?

Lecture

We all know what this is. The instructor does most of the talking, often with slides, or even worse, without. Lecture may be appropriate for esoteric or arcane subjects in which the lecturer knows a great deal more than the participants, but they carry the danger of failing to keep the participants engaged. To make the lecture format work, the SGL must stop frequently (take down the Zoom slide screen share so everyone can see each other) and invite participation with at least questions and answers, but even better with an actual discussion. If students are not engaged, they tend to drift off, check their phone, or "multi-task" while the SGL is talking.

Some of the best lecturers at BOLLI are actually story tellers. They leave behind the dry stuff that can be read in texts and weaves stories and examples into what they are teaching. They stop and ask for comments. They invite others to contribute their ideas and to interact with each other -- not just the "call and response" pattern of participant question and SGL answer.

Facilitated Discussion

Facilitated discussion is a way to involve the class in the learning experience. A facilitated discussion is a structured process where the SGL guides a group conversation to achieve specific goals, such as shared understanding, analysis, problem solving, or decision making. The facilitator encourages participation, asks probing questions, and moderates to ensure that all voices are heard. Rather than just leading back-and-forth questions and answers between SGL and participant, the SGL tries to get participants to listen to and respond to each other, creating a learning dialog. For example, an SGL teaching a short story course based on the group analyzing stories together, will ask a series of questions that will lead the group through the story in a way that their collective exploration leads to understanding the story, usually from multiple perspectives. More information about how to create good facilitated discussions is provided in Week 4.

Creating an Enticing Course Description

"Packaging can be theater, it can create a story." –Steve Jobs

Creating an enticing course description is like crafting a movie trailer—it should spark curiosity, highlight the benefits, and give a taste of what’s to come without giving everything away. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you shape one that attracts learners:

Start with a Hook - Open with a compelling question, surprising fact, or vivid image. Make readers feel like this is the course they’ve been waiting for.

Examples:

What do Homer’s “Odyssey” and your daily commute have in common?”

Tired of surface-level conversations about race, gender, and power? This course goes deeper.

Clarify the Purpose - Briefly state what the course is about. Be specific but accessible—avoid jargon unless your audience expects it.

Example: Explore the unspoken rules of social life through literature, film, and lived experience.

Show What’s in It for Them - What skills will they gain, questions will they explore, or transformations might they experience?

Example: You’ll leave with a new lens for interpreting stories—and your own life.

Highlight Key Features - Name formats (discussion-based? project-driven?), notable texts or themes, or anything else that sets the course apart.

Example: We’ll read a mix of classic and contemporary texts, hold collaborative discussions, and create space for reflection and personal connection.

Be Clear About any Requirements - Make people feel like they belong in the room, no matter their background.

Example: No prior experience with philosophy or literature is required—just curiosity and a willingness to dive in.

But if your course does require prior skills, knowledge, or tools, state this clearly.

Example: This hands-on AI course requires familiarity with using internet browsers like Safari or Chrome.

Sample Course Description

Stories to Live By

What if the stories we tell shape the world we live in?

In this course, we’ll explore how narrative—and who gets to tell it—shapes identity, culture, and power. Through literature, film, and personal reflection, we’ll examine how stories help us make sense of the world—and how they can also limit or liberate our thinking.

We’ll begin with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” as a foundation for discussing the stakes of storytelling in everyday life. From there, we’ll read a mix of texts—ranging from fiction and memoir to essays and visual narratives—that open up alternative ways of seeing and being:

James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, a searing meditation on race, faith, and the American dream.

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, which blends memoir and myth to explore silence, voice, and cultural inheritance.

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, a hybrid text of poetry, essay, and visual art that confronts the insidiousness of everyday racism.

Jordan Peele’s film Get Out, offering a sharp cultural critique through the lens of horror and satire.

Together, we’ll examine how personal and collective stories are shaped by race, gender, memory, and power—and how they in turn shape us. You’ll be invited to connect these works to your own life experiences through discussion and short reflective writings. No prior experience with literature, theory, or storytelling is required—just curiosity and a willingness to engage.

Other Examples

Here are some other good examples from recent BOLLI terms.

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