Course Design: Goals Alignment
1. List the goals you have for yourself as an instructor, copied from the
Teaching Goals Inventory and referring to a course you are building:
2. How well do
your course goals match up with your overall goals as an instructor?
3. Jot down a few
ideas on what student goals in your class might be. What do they hope
to get out of the experience?
4. Look up on your college and department website the goals envisioned
by your program, and record them here:
5. Finally, brainstorm
some goals you think the community, university, and accrediting body
might have. What external pressures have an impact on what you do in
class, and how you do it? Note: university goals can be found online
and copied here verbatim.
6. Transcribe a few keywords from each set of goals into the chart below,
for easy reference.
Community, Accreditation, University Goals |
College and Dept. Goals |
Instructor Goals |
Student Goals |
UCF
Goals
Goal 1: Offer the best undergraduate education available in Florida.
Goal 2: Achieve international prominence in key programs of graduate
study and research.
Goal 3: Provide international focus to our curricula and research
programs.
Goal 4: Become more inclusive and diverse.
Goal 5: Be America’s leading partnership university.
Sample
Accreditation Goals in Business
• Communication abilities
• Ethical understanding and reasoning abilities
• Analytic skills
• Multicultural understanding
• Reflective thinking skills
• Ethical responsibilities in organizations and society. |
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• Is there
“alignment” between these various sets of goals?
• If there are moments of “disconnect” between sets
of goals, can you think of strategies to address them? How can you adjust
your own goals so they fit better with the others listed here?
7. Looking over the list of goals from the community, department, and
students, are you struck by any items that you hadn’t considered
originally when writing your course syllabus? Now that you’ve
considered other people’s goals, what will you do differently
in your class (i.e., cover different material, add or delete activities,
change your focus for some portions of the semester, etc)?
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