So you’re a new contract faculty at Durham College.
We know that you've been given a lot of information, you're probably juggling
all kinds of stuff and feeling a little bit overwhelmed.
This is why we wanted to give you this short video that provides you with kind of a
checklist about the Durham College course outline.
You can go back and look at it any time that you want.
The idea is we want you to know what each part is
and what you can and cannot change on your course outline.
So let's get started by looking at the overview.
The first page here in the college course outline is pretty obvious, it
gives basically overview data about what this course
is.
What you're looking at here is the template that's available for Durham
College faculty to create course outlines.
You've been given one that has this information filled in.
It'll have the course name, the year it’s being delivered,
what programs this course is being delivered to,
it's code, perhaps if it’s delivered through continuing
education it might have a second code, how many course hours are involved,
how much it’s weighted towards the student's grade point average,
any prerequisite courses that tell you what knowledge the students must have mastered
before they enter your course, and whether the course has co-requisites which
means other courses that they must be taking at the same time.
It'll tell you who it was prepared by and this is a person you might try and find
if you need to learn more about the course before you teach it.
It'll tell you whether students are going to be required to bring a laptop
to the course or not.
Who authorized it and then your information and any other teachers who
were teaching the course that term, will be on the bottom of that first page.
So this is overview information that's very useful both to you and to the
students.
Let's take a look at the second page This page will have the course description
and the rationale.
For you and for students this really answers questions such as what will the
scores be all about?
How will it be taught?
What are the big ideas contained within it?
And in the rationale, why do I have this course in my program?
How does it connect to other courses?
How does it connect to my career goal in taking this program?
Let's take a closer look at what comes next: The course learning outcomes.
The course specific outcomes are extremely important for you as a new teacher.
You need to read them carefully and be aware that they really form a
contract with the students, as the whole course outline does, and this is really
something that you can't be changing without consultation with your program coordinator.
The course specific outcomes will tell us exactly what the students can expect to
be measured on by the end of the course.
They represent what are called complex cumulative behaviours.
Each one might require you to teach and test small portions of it, or steps, or
sub topics, but the course specific outcomes represent
the most sophisticated, most complex thing that the students should be
expected to be evaluated on in the course.
It's important that you provide opportunities for the students to be
taught the material, for them to practice the material and to be
evaluated on the material in ways that are very close to the way that it's described
in the course specific outcomes.
If you have any doubt about any of them, or are not understanding how you should be
addressing them, please do go and see your program coordinator
or seek help from the specialists in the C.A.F.E.
On the other side here you'll see essential employability outcomes.
These are outcomes that are mandated by our funding body the Ministry of
Training Colleges and Universities.
All of our students must accomplish eleven essential employability outcomes
by the time they finish their entire program.
Notice that you really aren't expected to address all eleven in each course.
If you find there are eleven outcomes in this section,
that's probably a mistake and you should go and talk to your program coordinator
before proceeding.
In general, however, if it's done correctly there should be maybe two or
three essential employability outcomes, or perhaps four or five,
and the idea is that these will also be taught and assessed in the course.
The keyword being assessed.
If you have an employability outcome listed here, it
implies that you are evaluating the students on that skill or ability.
Again if you have questions about how to do this,
go see your program coordinator, your associate dean or some of the
specialists in the C.A.F.E.
The next piece that you'll find in the course outline is the sequence of
instruction.
This of course is very specific and really talks about how you're going to
teach and how students are going to learn.
It has the number of weeks listed, they ask you to list or will already be listed
for you the intended learning, really the topics that the students are going
to cover, resources and references that will be available
for students, or that they should bring to class
approximately how many class hours will be spent on each topic,
how these reference to the learning outcomes from the previous page, which
learning outcomes and essential employability outcomes
are you working on in each particular week.
The intended learning activities should tell the student what kind of thing they
can expect to be doing in class.
Will they be listening to lectures, doing exercises, doing group work,
taking a field trip, having a guest lecturer, all that would be listed in the intended learning
activities.
In the evidence of learning sections the assessment is intended to tell the students
what kind of formative feedback they'll be getting.
In other words, feedback on practice in class, and not really about grades.
They would not be getting marks in this column.
That comes in this column here at the evaluation and waiting.
And that's where you'll find listed the tests and assignments
etc. and how much of the overall course each one
of those is worth.
As always if you have questions about this by all means speak to the
program coordinator or your associate dean.
This is the area of the course outline that’s a little bit negotiable.
There may be multiple sections of the course being taught by different
teachers, they may have different class schedules or
different groups of students.
This may vary a little bit, it's the one area that you really can vary
without too much concern.
But always let your students know what you’re varying and what the new plan is
each time.
It's important that you don't vary too much from it and that you do what the
course is intended to do so that all the courses in a program
build in a coordinated fashion; that you're not teaching things that other
teachers are already teaching, or you're not leaving out things that other
teachers need you to teach in order for students to be successful.
The next section in the course outline is the evaluation criteria and again this
is extremely important.
It's important that you don't change this because we don't want the students
to be misled, or to be able to appeal their grade because
it turns out you didn't do what the course outline said.
As specifically as possible it will tell you the different ways students are
going to be evaluated, whether they’re tests or assignments or
projects, field placements, clinical practice, all sorts
of different ways and the waiting of each thing so that they
know how much each one is worth.
In this way the students will know how they're going to be measured
in the course, and they can have confidence
that they know exactly where their marks are going to be coming from.
The next section is the required texts and supplies.
Anything that students have to have in order to be successful in the class
should be listed here, and you should make sure that you request
a desk copy of any text books for the course
from the publishers.
The same with recommended resources if there are recommended resources
and then you should make sure you have a copy of them as well.
The last few parts of the course outline are pre printed for you.
Policies and expectations for the learning environment that come from the
college.
There’s also a space for you to put course specific policies
and expectations so that students really know what the roadmap
is, what they're expected to do -
what they're allowed to do, what they're not allowed to do.
This section on what's called PLAR is Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition.
We recognize that students learn outside of the college classroom.
They may have prior experience in the workplace or other experience in their
lives which may make them eligible for credit in
this course.
Essentially every course at Durham College is eligible for PLAR
challenge.
If you have a student who inquires about this, be sure to learn more about the
process.
You may be asked to create a challenge test or assignment,
or to mark a portfolio that a student presents in order for that person to get
credit in the course.
You'll need to know more about the process if that happened, so make sure
that you ask your coordinator or your associate dean.
The general course outline notes are pretty much common to everybody
at Durham College and all of these are on pretty much every course outline.
You should be familiar with them and point them out to your students so they’re
familiar with them as well.
In the end it's important to follow the course outline as closely as possible
so that you don't get a whole lot of nasty emails from your students and have
very unhappy students.
What you want is to follow the course outline successfully
so that both the students and the team members - your team members in the program
will be very happy with you as a teacher.
If you find you still have questions about the course outline or things you
are unsure about, the first line of questioning is to your program
coordinator or your associate dean and also there's a lot of help available
at the Center for Academic and Faculty Enrichment in SW 101.
Go ahead and come and see us any time you have a question.
Good luck with your teaching!