Courses are usually part of a larger whole, and to maximize the student experience and cohesiveness of the program, consider how your course impacts the program. This is a great opportunity to collaborate with other faculty in your program as well!
NOTE: Program-level planning is a crucial task, and if you haven’t done so, we encourage all COE programs to go through the Dean’s Office Support for Program Approval (SPA) located on the COE Intranet when planning a new program.
Program Alignment
Your course objectives should align to the overall goals and objectives of the program. You want to make sure the goals of your course are supporting the overall goals of your program. Also, make sure that you aren’t overlapping objectives or assessments with other courses in the program. If you’re interested in additional support with overall program alignment, contact DCDC.
The Program Overview Template is a tool for listing courses and their key assessments and/or evaluation activities. This simple tool can be useful for departments or groups of faculty who are aligning their courses/assessments to program outcomes. For example, the template includes a column for documenting how student assignments are scaffolding toward student completion of plan B papers.
Program Overview Template (Gdoc)
Example
Here’s a program alignment of Program (PLOs) and Course Objectives (CLOs) that DCDC has worked on with the Children’s Healthy Living Summer Institute (CHL). Courses are listed in the first column, and Program Objectives across the top. DCDC created a web-based, interactive version at the CHL program website.