2.1 Why create a course map?
A course map is a short document that makes the alignment of your course more transparent to you, to your instructional designer, and to future educators.
It is a key tool in course development. In the H5P interaction below, select a hot spot to learn more about the purpose of this part of the course map.
A course map represents the learning pathway that you’ve designed for your students. It captures the course-level learning outcomes for your institution or program as well as the unit-level learning objectives you’ve developed across a term. The course map locates assessments, feedback, activities, and content in a weekly sequence so that the alignment between these course elements and the unit-level learning objectives is bright and clear. As Oregon institutions use 10 or 11 week terms, our course map template is divided into 10 weeks and a finals week.
Creating a course map is often a new experience for instructors. Although most instructors have created a syllabus, a course map is a different animal. Whereas a syllabus orients students to course policies, a grading rationale, major assignments, and a tentative work schedule, a course map leaps backwards to the very goals of the course itself.
How to Create a Course Map
In your initial consultation, your instructional designer will work with you to create a course development timeline that works for your schedule and goals. This timeline includes benchmarks for completing each column of the course map, drafting a sample module in your course shell, and drafting assignment prompts and rubrics. The first goal is to complete the course map!
Step Zero: Course-Level Learning Outcomes
Review your course-level learning outcomes and consider what resonates the most with you. What is most important to you of all the things students could learn in your course? What skills, perspectives, or modes of analysis do you want students to be able to develop? What are the big ideas that drive this learning pathway you’re creating together? Thinking through the course-level learning outcomes in detail with your instructional designer can help to anchor your personal investment in what students learn and what you want to create for them.
Step 1: Weekly Learning Objectives
After filling in the information at the top of the course map, including the course-level learning outcomes determined by your institution, fill in the learning objectives for each week or unit. These learning objectives support the course-level learning outcomes and break down these larger goals into parts or pieces that are more measurable. This process takes time, but it will help your instructional designer and future educators to understand how each part of your design fits together. Some instructors haven’t worked with unit-level or weekly learning objectives before. Lean on your instructional designer! They are here to help you make learning objectives authentic, clear, and aligned with course-level learning outcomes.
Step 2: Assessments
After creating the learning objectives, sketch out major assessments in your map. How can students express their achievement of course learning outcomes? What projects, portfolios, performances, or creative partnerships would allow you to measure what they’ve accomplished? What skills do students need to develop over time? Working backwards from the end of the term, what benchmarks or checkpoints make the most sense for submitting final work? How could you scaffold peer review or feedback before the final is submitted? Your instructional designer can help you to review existing assignments and make suggestions for increased transparency, including adding purpose, tasks, and criteria for success to each assignment (TILT it!). After they are mapped, you can set a timeline for completing the assignment prompts and rubrics with your instructional designer.
Step 3: Media Plan
Are there media elements you want to create for your project? For example, do you want to interview students with their permission and add recordings of these interviews to future courses? Do you want to record short weekly lectures to include in the course as an overview of assigned content? Talk with your instructional designer about the timing and goals for potential media creation so they can help you plan for additional development time. This project includes media project funding, and the earlier we get started on developing media requests, the better!
Step 4: Activities and Content
Once the rest of the map is complete, the final step is to add planned activities and assigned content. Given your learning objectives and assessment planning, what activities would help students practice skills, learn from one another, and share their lived experiences? What is the best sequence for major themes and content? Where does it makes sense to build in catch-up weeks where students are completing bench-marks or preparing for a major assessment? A great strategy for planning activities is to consider multiple means of engagement. Rather than repeat the same discussion board activity each week, consider giving students options to teach one another about concepts relating to that week’s theme or to submit personal reflections directly to you for feedback. Allowing multiple opportunities for student choice can help increase motivation and belonging.
How do I know if I’m done with my map?
Creating a course map is an iterative process. This means you can return to it again as you build out the course and later, after the term is over, before you share it with other educators. The goal is to make alignment legible for yourself and your instructional designer before you design your course shell. Once you have your course weeks mapped and content planned, you are ready to build out module content in your institutional learning management system (Blackboard, Moodle, D2L) and to draft your assignment prompts and rubrics in your shared Google workspace.
As with any creative endeavor, you will discover as you build and draft assignments that you may want to shift things around or introduce a new assignment or create a different checkpoint. This is okay. In fact, this is great! Changing your mind and tracking those changes is part of the design process. Starting with a focus on alignment will help you to take out what you don’t need and refine what you want to keep.
Flower Darby suggests that educators embrace a roundabout design model for course mapping. This means expecting to take different exits for assignment development or activity planning or student engagement, and return again and again to the main map to check for alignment. Rather than assume a linear design process, where each element marches along in perfect order, expect to get each column of your course map to “good for now” state and plan to revisit each one later as you’re building your course site and assignment prompts.
References
Darby, Flower. “Planning a Great Online Class Through Roundabout Design.” Faculty Focus. Jan. 11 2021. Accessed June 2 2023. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-course-design-and-preparation/planning-a-great-online-class-through-roundabout-design/
Licenses and Attributions
“Course Mapping Template” by Veronica Vold for Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed CC BY-NC-SA and is adapted from “The Online Course Mapping Guide” by the Digital Learning Hub in the Teaching + Learning Commons at UC San Diego licensed CC BY-NC-SA
All other content on this page is by Veronica Vold for Open Oregon Educational Resources and is licensed under CC BY 4.0.