CTL Course Design Resources
CTL offers a number of resources to help you design new courses faster and more effectively, as well improve existing courses.
Seminars
Each fall, we offer course design seminars, catered to the disciplinary area of the participants and organized so that you leave the seminar with concrete materials for a new course. Click here for seminar descriptions, dates, times, and locations.
Individual Consultation
CTL's Associate Directors each address a specific disciplinary area (see below), and they will be glad to offer you customized individual assistance as you think about your new course. Please feel free to contact the relevant Associate Director to set up a meeting.
| Robyn Dunbar, Ph.D. | Senior Associate Director for the Sciences and Engineering | robyn.dunbar@stanford.edu 723-3920 |
| Mariatte Denman, Ph.D | Associate Director for the Humanities | mdenman@stanford.edu 723-6487 |
| Marcelo Clerici-Arias | Associate Director for the Social Sciences and Technology | marcelo@stanford.edu 725-0127 |
Course Design Aids
Below are links to three PDFs of course design aids which have proven useful to faculty in our course design seminars. The first document is an overview to course design, using a technique called "Designing Courses Backwards." The second document addresses writing clear, effective course objectives, and the third document is a set of course goals from Stanford courses in various disciplines.
Designing Courses Backwards
Thinking about Your Course Goals
Course Goals - Examples from Stanford Syllabi
Newsletter
We've devoted a special issue of our CTL newsletter,
Speaking of Teaching,
to the topic of course design. This is a
great starting place for those who want to quickly pick up some strategies for better course design.
Click here
for a PDF copy of this issue.
Resources outside CTL
The Cutting Edge Project, centered at Carleton University, has put together a stand-alone online tutorial,
geared primarily for faculty in the sciences
and engineering, that guides you through the basics of designing a new course.
Click here
to access the tutorial.