Teaching Foundations 

Course learning outcomes are defined as statements of what students should know or be able to do after completing an entire course, and lesson objectives are brief statements of what students should know or be able to do after an individual class lesson.  

Well-written course outcomes and learning objectives help the instructor and the students. They provide the instructor with a roadmap for assessment and lesson planning, and they tell the students what is important.

The ABCD Model for writing objectives incorporates different components into your objective. James Madison University provides an introduction to the ABCD Method. 

Yale's Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning provides examples of objectives  from courses from different disciplines. It also includes recommendations for designing objectives.

Using Bloom's Taxonomy as a resource provides guidance for ensuring you are varying the level of complexity of thought you are requiring of your students. Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching reviews Bloom's Taxonomy and provides additional information for its utilization. 

Below are examples of well-written learning objectives.

• Students will be able to evaluate their classmates’ arguments in a Socratic seminar by taking Cornell notes during each discussion. 

• Students will be able to apply their knowledge of the writing process to a peer editing session in which they provide at least five peers with feedback aligned with the class rubric.

•  After reading “The Tell-Tale Heart,” students will be able to contrast Poe’s tone with another Romantic author in a short expository paragraph. 

Distinguishing Between Learning Outcomes vs. Learning Objectives at ECC

Learning Outcomes:  Statements that articulate what a student should be able to successfully demonstrate after completing a course or program. Learning outcomes should be student-centered (focused on what students are doing with their gained knowledge and/or skills) and measurable. The course learning outcomes should be the foundation of the course and guide instructional design choices.

ECC has course outcomes, which state what students should be able to do after completing a course, and general education outcomes, which state even more broad skills and knowledge that students should be able to demonstrate as part of their wider ECC education. Certain programs also include program learning outcomes, which state what students should be able to successfully demonstrate after completing a program. 

• Course Learning Outcome Example 1:  Develop essays through multiple drafts, reflecting and applying feedback from teachers and peers to improve one’s writing.

• Course Learning Outcome Example 2:  Demonstrate automotive shop safety procedures.

• Program Learning Outcomes Example 1:  Engage in clinical judgment to provide safe, evidence-based person-centered nursing care across the lifespan. 

• Program Learning Outcome Example 2:  Prepare basic financial statements (Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Statement of Equity)

• General Education Learning Outcome Example 1:  Create clear, well-organized written, oral, or visual messages. 

• General Education Learning Outcomes Example 2:  Collect and examine scientific data.

Objectives:  Statements that articulate what a student should be able to do after the individual learning experiences (lessons for in-person courses, modules and/or units for asynchronous online courses) that are part of the larger course and course learning outcomes. Like the course outcomes, the objectives of lessons, modules, and/or units should be student-centered (focused on what students are doing with their gained knowledge and/or skills) and measurable. The lesson objectives should add up to form a larger course outcome and should be the foundation of individual learning experiences and guide instructional design choices.

• Lesson or Module Objective Example 1:  Calculate and prepare adjustments for unrecorded business transactions. 

• Course Outcome the Lesson Objective Aligns With:  Properly identify and record business transactions for service and merchandising businesses including daily transactions, monthly adjusting entries and year end closing entries. 

  • Aligned Program Learning Outcome: Identify and record business transactions applying GAAP rules and principles thru the entire accounting cycle. 

    • Aligned General Education Learning Outcomes:  Accurately perform measurements and calculations. 

• Lesson or Module Objective Example 2:  Given a sample essay and rubric, students will provide appropriate feedback based on rubric criteria and levels.

  • Course Outcome the Lesson Objective Aligns With:  Develop essays through multiple drafts, reflecting and applying feedback from teachers and peers to improve one’s writing

    • Aligned General Education Learning Outcomes:  Create clear, well-organized written, oral or visual messages. 

• Lesson or Module Objective Example 3:  Students will be able to identify examples of safe and unsafe attire for an automotive shop.

• Course Outcome the Lesson Objective Aligns With:  Demonstrate automotive shop safety procedures.

Carnegie Mellon University's Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation's website contains pages on assessment basics, assessing students' prior knowledge, assessing students learning and performance, and assessing your teaching. 

Summative assessment occurs at the end of the learning process. It is culminating and evaluative. In practice, it looks like a final or credentialing exam, a paper, or a research project or presentation.

Formative assessment occurs during the learning process. It is used to gauge the students' progress and adjust instruction as necessary as you work towards your objectives and summative assessments. It can be a short assignment, draft of a future paper, or observation of group work or in-class activity.

• Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) are formative assessments made popular by Angelo and Cross's book Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. You can find 50 CATs by Angelo and Cross at this link. The list includes CATs, their purposes, and a description of each one. 

  • One example of a CAT is "muddiest point." This prompts students to respond to the question, "What is the muddiest point in ________?" Responses will indicate any points of the content that are still unclear, or "muddy," for the students.

While Backwards Design provides steps that can be used for designing a course, unit, or individual lesson, scaffolding is a teaching approach that considers the pacing and structure of assignments and activities. 

Scaffolding

What is Scaffolding?

Scaffolding, as a teaching approach, can mean many different things. This page defines scaffolding as breaking down major projects and assignments into component parts, or stages, and providing support structures for students to succeed at the individual tasks. When scaffolding assignments and projects, resources like templates, project proposals, and focused exercises are used to aid students in completing the major component parts of an assignment, with the goal that students are then able to complete such projects without such support in the future (once the scaffolding is removed).

The counter to scaffolding would be to present major concepts and competencies in a lesson and then to expect students to go off and return with a completed project, with minimal feedback along the way and no support structures to aid students in completing the individual components and with few opportunities low-stakes practice.  

An example of scaffolding that is often used when students are working on research projects is to require students, before they submit the final project, to submit or present a topic proposal and other component parts, such as research summaries and multiple drafts. The instructor would provide feedback on some or all of those components before grading the Final Draft. 

In some courses, as the course progresses and students develop competence in the course objectives, the individual support pieces are removed so that students gain experience in making independent decisions regarding what tools to use and how to accomplish assignments. 

What are the Benefits of Scaffolding? 

The benefits of scaffolding include

• Students receive frequent feedback from the instructor and from their peers on more low-stakes assignments before the final draft of major projects

• Scaffolding is based on research in learning theory that emphasizes students developing competence in individual tasks that are later contextualized in a larger application (Ambrose et al. 102). 

• Separating projects into stages models for students how approach time and project management skills

For online courses, especially, scaffolding provides helpful structure for students and avoids outdated models of “correspondence courses” in which a student was mailed course materials and then independently completed work to be mailed back. 

Examples of Scaffolding

The brief essay linked to below describes several approaches for using scaffolding in online learning and focuses on a central example of ways to scaffold learning in an online Intro to Natural Sciences course. 

"Scaffolding Online Student Success"

Steps to Using Scaffolding to Plan a Course 

The essay linked below includes a list of helpful directions to help faculty begin scaffolding assignments and lessons. Examples of steps to take include 

• "Write a brief description of each major assignment/assessment which should include the necessary skills you intend to evaluate using the assignment/assessment.

• Ponder what prerequisite skills are necessary for students to have in order to be successful on this assignment/assessment and list them." and several more. 

"Scaffolding Student Learning:  Tips for Getting Started" 

Template for Planning an Online Learning with Scaffolding 

The template below adapts the steps suggested in the "Scaffolding Student Learning" essay into questions that can be answered to help faculty consider scaffolding or an assignment. 

Scaffolding Assignment Template 

A good lesson plan keeps faculty organized. With a good lesson plan, faculty are able to successfully deliver instruction, monitor students' progress, and work towards learning objectives at an appropriate pace. 

The University of Michigan's Center for Research on Learning & Teaching has a page on Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning. The page outlines the steps and consideration for developing lesson plans.

This folder contains several lesson plan templates that can easily be used or adapted for any content area.

Backwards Design

What is Backwards Design?

As a design strategy applied to numerous fields, Backwards Design essentially means to begin planning by focusing on the end goals. If successful, what will the end product be? When applied to creating a course, Backwards Design focuses on beginning by articulating what students will have gained (skills or new ways of thinking) upon successfully completing a course. Then, the faculty member considers how they can assess whether or not students have achieved those objectives. After deciding on ways to measure whether or not students have met course objectives, faculty determine what topics, activities, and methods of instruction will be most helpful to prepare students to succeed on those assessments. 

Two of the leading scholars on Backwards Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, describe how this approach to course design starts:  “We don’t start with content; we start with what students are expected to be able to do with content. What would real use of the content look like? What should students ultimately be able to say and do with the content if they ‘get it?”” (7).

What is “backwards” about this approach to course design is that many faculty often begin planning a course by first choosing the topics or skills to cover. They then decide what assignments to include to assess students’ knowledge or ability on those topics. Backwards Design reverses those steps. 

For an example of a traditional, and less focused, approach to course design, let's consider teaching a brand new literature course in Science Fiction. We might first choose the major texts (books, films, and video games) and  Science Fiction concepts to study in the course. Once we have the course reading list and topic list, we would plan the necessary lectures and activities. Lastly, we would decide on the course assignments to include. A problem with that approach is that it can cause faculty to lose focus of the bigger picture, the question of “What do I really want someone to get out of this course?” 

A Backwards Design approach to designing that same Science Fiction course would involve approaching the below questions in this particular order 

1. What skills or knowledge do I want students to leave this course with?:  

2. How can I tell whether or not students have gained those skills or knowledge? 

3. What activities, lessons, and texts should I include to prepare students to demonstrate those skills or knowledge? 

What Are the Benefits of Backwards Design? 

The benefit of Backwards Design is that it provides faculty with a intentional process for planning their online course that focused on learning. By starting with the end in mind, a faculty member can prioritize what is important to include in the course to get students to those objectives rather than simply trying to cram everything possible into the course. We can ask, “Is this helpful for meeting a clear objective?” The focus on learning objectives first, before activities, helps to fulfill advice of scholars of online learning that "design focus should be on the learning aspect of the course, and not the teaching" (O'Keefe et al. 15).  

Steps to Using Backwards Design to Plan a Lesson

One approach to using Backwards Design is to answer the three questions below, laid out by L. Dee Fink’s in his "A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning ,” as part of a larger approach to course planning.  

1. What do I want students to learn? (Learning Goals)

2. How will students (and the teacher) know if these goals are being accomplished? (Feedback and assessment) 

3. What will the teacher and students need to do in order for students to achieve the learning goals? (Teaching/Learning Activities) (Fink 5). 

Template for Using Backwards Design 

Below is a Word Doc template that can be downloaded and filled out to help faculty plan a full course, a unit, or an individual lessons using Backwards Design. To fill out the template, replace the red text with specific information about your course. 

Backwards Design, Understanding by Design, Template 

Active learning is any learning activity that involves students engaging as participants in the learning process. This article provides several examples of active learning techniques. The article features active learning in the context of math. However, the strategies can be applied to any discipline.

Students need critical thinking skills to be reflective and innovative. Critical thinking is an important, transferrable skill that will help students in academic and work settings. The University of Connecticut's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning states that critical thinking is the foundation of a strong education. 

Metacognition is thinking about one's thinking. Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching provides a more detailed look at metacognition and introduces methods for incorporating it into your teaching. As stated on Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching's website, "Metacognitive practices increase students’ abilities to transfer or adapt their learning to new contexts and tasks."

Sense of belonging refers to college students' beliefs regarding their sense of inclusion and fit in a class or college. Students' relationships with their faculty, their classmates, and others they interact with at a school impact questions like "Do I belong at this college?" and "Am I smart enough to do well in this course?" 

In order for students to succeed in a class, it is crucial that they understand what success means in the course and believe they are capable of succeeding. There are several instructional strategies that can help create a learning environment in which diverse students feel a sense of belonging, necessary for academic success.  

Some strategies that can help create a sense of belonging include

• Make Uncertainty Safe:  During class activities and discussion, give students the opportunity to revise their answers and thinking and ask follow-up questions to guide them through their answers. Also, include numerous low-stakes assignments to allow for practice. 

• Ask Students About Themselves:  Early in a course, it is helpful to ask all students to share information about their academic, professional, and personal interests as well as to share anything they'd like to about what will help them in the course. Soliciting such information helps to demonstrate your investment in their success and can inform you about necessary steps to take. 

  • Example First Week Survey to Students

Vanderbilt University's Increasing Inclusivity in the Classroom page offers several additional strategies that can bolster students sense of belonging. 

Throughout the course, difficult national and local events may occur that are worth addressing with students, either through simply acknowledging or discussing. For faculty who would like to address with their classes and would like a basic email template that may be adapted, the below content is offered. 

Communication that Faculty Might Send to Students 

I’m writing because ________________________. 

I recognize that this event, has likely made it exceptionally difficult to be a student. It’s okay if you are experiencing a variety of feelings, and it’s okay to be silent for a moment to process. 

I sincerely hope that everyone in this course has opportunities to process, on your own or with others, your reactions and experiences. Please remember to take care of your physical needs (eating, sleeping, connecting with others), and please try to consider how you are feeling. 

Campus Resources

For all students, ECC has a group of trained Wellness Professionals who are available to help support mental and emotional well-being. To schedule a free appointment with an ECC Wellness Professional 

• Schedule online by logging onto your Access ECC Portal and under the ECC Apps you, click on "Schedule a Wellness Services Appointment" button

• Or call 847-214-7390

• And/or email them at studentwellness@elgin.edu. 

Office Hours 

Finally, my Office Hours times are:  INSERT OFFICE HOURS INFO 

Students are welcome to discuss non-course related topics, especially if any students would like to generally check in.

Resources to Share with Students

• ECC Wellness Services

• ECC Student Life 

Resources To Further Support Faculty 

• Managing Difficult Classroom Conversations, from the Indiana University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning 

• Ten Tips for Facilitating Classroom Discussions on Sensitive Topics 

Questions? Additional Thoughts, or Resources to share? Please contact Tyler Roeger, Associate Dean of CETAL, at troeger@elgin.edu or Heather Martin, Assistant Dean of CETAL, at hmartin@elgin.edu.