Teaching Strategy #1

Determine Place of Each Course You Teach
Within Departmental and School Curriculum

When developing a new course or preparing to teach an existing course, instructors need to understand the general curriculum in order to fulfill the expectations of the students and the institution. When preparing to teach a course at any level, answer the following multi-layered question:

Why am I telling these people these things at this time?

To begin answering this question, consider the level of the course within the curriculum:

• Introductor
• Intermediate
• Advanced

When teaching an introductory course, we tend to believe that the students have no significant background. Although that, of course, is not always the case, it is important to decide what information forms the basis of a discipline. As in all courses, it is impossible and unnecessary to cover everything. Focusing on the key concepts is the task. Consider, also, that students even in an introductory course may have had some preparation in high school.

Although intermediate courses presuppose some knowledge on the part of the students, begin with a review and ask questions that will probe how much the students know—or don’t know. It may be necessary to spend a little more time than you had intended on filling in some obvious gaps.

Students who enroll in an advanced course should have learned the key concepts of the field. However, even in upper level courses, some students may not have been taught or have learned what you consider to be important material, especially if lower level courses haven’t covered what you consider to be important. A pre-test will help you determine how much the students don’t know.

Finally, or perhaps simultaneously, read the school’s course catalogue and talk to colleagues to identify expectations, to eliminate redundancies and to create a syllabus that will help you answer the question: Why am I telling these people these things at this time?

For more information on course design and development, consult the helpful book: Diamond, Robert M. Designing and Assessing Course & Curricula: A Practical Guide , rev.ed. Jossey Bass, 1998.