Teachers' Toolbox/Planning a course

Here we describe the essential points to consider when planning an entire course.

The goal of teaching: Learning Objectives

It is important for your own focus in planning a course that you specify what it is you want the students to learn in the course. This will also help you write up a good course description and put focus on the essentials during teaching where sometimes it's easy to end up spending a lot of time on an unnecessary detail.

Pre-Assesment

Before starting the class, the students should know what's required to follow it. And even if they have taken the right classes, they might not remember everything or the teacher who taught them might have emphasized other things than you expect. It's a good idea to start a course by making a brief test of the fundamental prerequisites for following the course. Starting with a test can be a bit scary and it's important to emphasize that this is not a test the gives a score for the student, but a test that helps the teacher making a course on a level that suits the students (unofficially, you'll also know if specific students lack specific things and hence should have extra attention to learn these) The pre-assessment can be a multiple choice test. Apart from asking the questions on the subject it can also ask if the student finds the questions difficult or easy, so you can get insight into what subjects the student find easy.

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