In the spirit of backwards design, this section discusses the end point of your course design process. After you pilot your new course design, you’ll revise it for the benefit of future educators to reuse. At that point, you will be sharing what we call a course pack.

At its best, a course pack offers future educators a transparent and easily adaptable pathway for student engagement. It will be clear how the pathway aligns with the textbook learning outcomes and statewide learning outcomes because all course packs include a syllabus, course map, and instructor guide.

A course pack also includes the information that future instructors need to understand your course design and determine whether to adopt or adapt it if they teach the course. It shares assignments, activities, and rubrics that future instructors can use to assess student achievement of course-level learning outcomes. It notes the course delivery format (hybrid, fully online, in-person) and the number of hours of expected coursework per week, and they share a statement about the grading scheme and assessment rationale.

In this project, we share course packs on a Google Site with links to Google Docs for all assignment prompts, activity prompts, and rubrics. This solves the problem that Oregon institutions do not use one learning management system across all campuses. All of the content is openly licensed, which meets one of our Oregon Context criteria for success: Copyright restrictions are minimized so that downstream users (your Oregon colleagues) have permission to revise, remix, and share forward.

Remember, you only share course materials that you have revised and agreed to release with an open license. You will work with your Instructional Designer and incorporate revisions based on student feedback, your own teaching experience, and feedback from our Workforce Advisory Board. After a cycle of revision, your materials will be ready for the final upload to the course pack site.

Sample Course Packs

Mental Disorders and the Law Instructor Course Packs [Website] includes three course packs that integrate with the open textbook. Two are fully online asynchronous courses taught at two different institutions in Oregon. The third is a remote course with synchronous class sessions. Please explore these examples to understand what a course pack is and start thinking ahead about what you might choose to share.

Unit Self-Check Questions

Licenses and Attributions for Looking Ahead: Introducing Course Packs

“Looking Ahead: Introducing Course Packs” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.