Learning Science Lab | Structuring your course

Designing and running a full course is a significant effort. It’s a wonder it usually falls to just one faculty member! From planning instruction like lectures, to quizzes and assessments, to coordinating student projects and advising students, a course is a major project indeed.

Like any large project, it benefits from some upfront planning. Planning your teaching at the course level allows you to ensure its progression serves the student experience. You can ensure the presentation of new knowledge is paced appropriately, that formative assessments are interspersed consistently throughout your teaching, that graded assignments are distributed in a way that remains manageable for both students and for yourself, and that all course elements, week by week, are aligned with your intended learning objectives.

Developing your course in a structured way can make this undertaking more manageable and allow you to focus on your teaching once your course is underway. Though building a course can be a highly individual process, there are some key steps to complete:

1. Create your syllabus
2. Define learning outcomes
3. Develop your course outline
4. Plan your lessons

Creating your syllabus

Your syllabus is one of the most important resources you’ll provide students. It’s what they’ll refer to to find out about course requirements, the evaluation process, contact information, the course schedule, classroom norms and institutional policy.

A comprehensive syllabus should include (Vai & Sosulski, 2016, pp. 179-180):

• Basic course information - The session (e.g. Spring, 2025), the course title and number or section, the instructor’s name and email, the academic credits and prerequisites.
• Course time frame and format
  • Format - Note if the course is asynchronous, hybrid, or in-person.
  • Number of weeks
  • Course start and end dates
  • For online courses, specify the start and end date of each week, and the time zone for assignments and deadlines.
• Course description - Provide a high-level summary of the course.
• Learning outcomes - Tell the students what they will know or be able to do at the course’s conclusion. (See below.)
• Communication strategy - Clearly describe when you will be available and your response time. This is especially important for online courses.
• Technical requirements and support - The contact information for online tech support for software, tools, and platforms used in the course. (e.g. Tableau, Brightspace, Zoom, etc.)
• Course requirements
  • Assignments - An overview of assignments, e.g. papers, projects, tests, readings, discussions, etc.
  • Assessment and feedback policy -
  • Activity grade percentages - The weighting of grades for different course activities
  • Class participation - Expectations and assessment criteria for class participation
  • Due dates and lateness policy - Set clear rules and consequences for handling late assignments
  • Course outline
    • Assessment plan
    • Course schedule
• Institutional policy links - Statements on plagiarism, honor code, inclusion, etc.
• AI Guidance - Define acceptable use of AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) for assignments or discussions, including citation requirements and consequences for misuse.
• Course outline - Presents the full sequence of events associated with the course: assignments, readings, activities, and course deliverables. See below for full details.

NYU Stern also has required language for syllabi. Be sure to review it and incorporate it in your syllabus.

You can also view Stern’s library of sample syllabi to see more examples.

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Defining learning outcomes

Key characteristics

Learning outcomes describe what students should know or be able to do after completing a learning experience. The learning experience could be a segment, a module, or a full course.
They need to be carefully constructed. Learning outcomes that are too vague or insufficiently student-focused will not be as effective. Well-designed learning outcomes:

• Center the learner - They are focused on what the learning will accomplish rather than what the instructor will teach.
• Establish specific and measurable goals - They use action-oriented terms to describe goals that are specific and can be clearly assessed.
• Motivate students - Learning outcomes make the benefits of learning clear from the beginning of the student’s experience.
• Inform design - Starting with learning outcomes guides you in including content, activities and assessments that serve students in meeting them.

Format

Working from an established format can aid in structuring effective learning outcomes. One such format is the “ABCD framework”.

1. Audience: Establish the scope and audience of the learning outcome.
2. Behavior: Use of verbs keeps the focus on the activity students will undertake*.* Language from the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is often useful here.
3. Conditions: How and where the learner will be able to do it.
4. Degree: The criteria for success or the level of proficiency expected of the audience.

The language in Bloom’s Taxonomy provides effective options for use in learning objectives.

Let’s examine an example to see how this looks in a completed learning objective:

“By the end of this unit, students given a sample financial document will accurately recognize and classify all assets, liabilities, and equity items in a five-minute video presentation.”

Here are some additional examples of learning outcomes written with this framework:

• Given a specific case study, students will accurately and comprehensively analyze and evaluate a company's target market and marketing mix, and present their findings in a written report.
• Within business settings, attendees will effectively and persuasively identify and defend ethical solutions to conflicts of interest through participation in a moderated group debate.
• In simulated workplace scenarios, students will thoroughly analyze, apply, and critique theories of motivation, leadership, and team dynamics to diagnose and improve organizational performance.

The ABCD framework is only one approach to creating learning outcomes, and it can be modified. But this structure ensures learning outcomes include all of their necessary components, and it can serve as a starting point for any learning outcomes you create.

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Developing your course outline

With the rest of your syllabus and your learning outcomes in place, you have what you need to develop a course outline, which will describe your course week by week.
Rather than starting with the content you wish to present, consider working backward from the student perspective:

1. Start with learning outcomes - Each unit and lesson will have at least one learning outcome. Begin with this.
   1. (e.g. “Students will be able to analyze a case study to identify key financial risks.”)
2. Determine necessary assessment - Now that you know the learning outcomes, what assessments are necessary to determine if they’ve been met?
   1. (e.g. “Students will complete a written analysis of a case study, highlighting financial risks and proposing solutions.”)
3. Identify the content needed for the assessment - What knowledge, skills and steps will students need to successfully complete the assessment? Answering this question will tell you what content to include in your lessons.
   1. (e.g. Include lessons on financial risk categories, analysis methods, and examples of successful case studies.)

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can begin to map the resulting lectures, readings, activities, and assignments on a weekly basis.

Take a look at a sample outline for a hypothetical Microeconomics course to get a sense of what your course outline might look like.

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Planning your lessons

After completing the preceding steps, we’ll have the basic organizing structures in place for your course. Now it’s time to flesh out individual lessons. Depending on how detailed you’ve made your course outline, you may find that much of what you need is already outlined at a high level.

Create a structure for your lessons, and plan ahead for how you will incorporate direct instruction, discussions, activities and assignments. If you’re teaching in person, this is largely a question of time management, though you may also need to ensure specific materials are available in-class for some exercises (e.g., a case study.)

Online courses require that this be explicitly mapped out in the Learning Management System. At NYU, this is Brightspace. You can use NYU Brightspace’s Content tool to structure your course’s recordings, readings, and other activities. This is also an invaluable tool for organizing asynchronous work as part of a hybrid or fully-in person course.

For an online course, lessons may need to include multiple tools in Brightspace such as HTML pages, PDFs, Discussion forums, quizzes, etc., in order to capture the different types of interaction that are available in-person.

Conclusion

Structuring a course requires thoughtful planning, clear communication, and a commitment to aligning all elements with the desired learning outcomes. By taking the time to create a comprehensive syllabus, define measurable goals, outline the course week by week, and design effective lessons, you set the stage for a well-organized, student-centered course that fosters meaningful learning.

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References

Vai, M., & Sosulski, K. (2016). Essentials of online course design: A standards-based guide. Routledge.