A Framework of Course Development Processes

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A Framework of Course Development Processes

• A Presentation based on Teachers as Course
  Developers (1996, 12-38) by Kathleen Graves

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Framework Components

• Needs assessment What are my students needs? How
  can I assess them so that I can address them?
• Determining goals and objectives What are the
  purposes and intended outcomes of the course?
  What will my students need to do or learn to
  achieve these goals?
• Conceptualizing content What will be the
  backbone of what I teach? What will I include in
  my syllabus?
• Selecting and Developing Materials and
  activities How and with what will I teach the
  course? What is my role? What are my students
  roles?
• Organizing of content and activities How will I
  organize the content and activities? What systems
  will I develop?
• Evaluation How will I assess what students have
  learned? How will I assess the effectiveness of
  the course?
• Consideration of resources and constraints What
  are the givens of my situation?

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Needs Assessment

• Objective Needs
• - these are related to students backgrounds,
  language abilities and intended use of the TL
  beyond the classroom.
• Subjective Needs
• - these relate to students attitudes toward
  the target language and target culture, toward
  learning in general, and toward themselves as
  learners.

Subjective needs are often as important as
objective needs
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Who Provides Info About Needs?

• Students
• Teachers
• Funders
• Parents
• Administration
• Employers
• Future Professors

It depends on the situation, right?
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How to Conduct a Needs Assessment

• Questionnaires
• Interviews
• Observations
• Samples of Written Materials
• Proficiency Test Scores

Needs assessment should be an ongoing process
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Needs Assessment as an Ongoing Process

• Mindmapping
• Student Generated Questionnaires
• Dialogue Journals
• Discussion with Students

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Determining Goals and Objectives

• Goals general statements of the overall,
  long-term purposes of the course
• Objectives express the specific ways in which
  the goals will be achieved

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How Goals and Objectives Provide a Framework

• They are a basis for determining which content
  and activities are appropriate for the given
  situation.
• They help enable us to form a framework for
  evaluating the effectiveness and worth of an
  activity.

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Four Kinds of Goals

• Proficiency goals general competency in the
  enabling skills (i.e., reading, writing, etc.)
• Cognitive goals include mastery of formal
  linguistic knowledge and cultural knowledge.
• Affective goals promote positive attitudes
  toward learning, the TL, the classroom
  environment, the teacher, peers, and so on
• Transfer goals the ability to call on skills
  learned in one situation in order to meet future
  challenges

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Five Kinds of Objectives

• Coverage objectives e.g., We will cover the
  first five units of
• Activity objectives e.g., Students will write
  four different types of sentences which
• Involvement objectives e.g., Students will
  engage in discussions about
• Mastery objectives e.g., Students will be able
  to write about
• Critical thinking objectives e.g., Students will
  be able to determine characteristics of a good
  paragraph such as

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Conceptualizing Content

• What will be the backbone of
• what we teach?

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The Completed Syllabus Grid
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Selecting and Developing Materials and Activities

• How and with what will we teach the course?

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Two Important Factors in Developing, Choosing, or
Adapting Materials

• The effectiveness in achieving the purpose of the
  course
• The appropriateness for the students and the
  teacher

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The text is not the course!!
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Organization of Content and Activities

• Course Development
• What is important?
• -----Figuring out systems for organizing the
  course
• The lesson level
• The course level

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Two General Principles of Sequencing

• Recycling
• Revisiting previous material in new ways

• Building
• Simple to complex
• More concrete to more open-ended

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Two Ways to Approach the Overall Organization

• A Cycle
• Follows a consistent sequence

• A Matrix
• Work with a set of possible activities
• As the course progresses, decide which activities
  to work with

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EVALUATION

• Why does one evaluate?
• What can be evaluated?
• When does one evaluate?
• Who evaluates?
• How does one evaluate?

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Considerations of Resources and Constraints

• What is viewed as resources and what is viewed as
  constraints depends on teachers perspective
• Teachers selection of materials and activities
  influences the class

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Summing Things up How this applies to the real
world.

• Resources do not matter as much as what you are
  able to do with them. A good teacher can turn a
  few given resources into a well designed,
  effective language teaching curriculum (including
  CALL applications)
• Being flexible and creative with what you have is
  ultimately the most important resource that a
  teacher can have to overcome the constraints of a
  given situation.