This course is for university teachers who are planning a new course, or want to look again at one they already teach.
It takes you through the decisions a course is made of, from what it is for to how students show what they have learned, and shows how a change in one reaches the others. You need no background in pedagogy.
Three short games go with the course. Play them here, any time →
The map is the model the course is built on: purpose at the core, the learning design in one triangle and the conditions in the other. Click a part of it to go to its step, or follow the route below. What you write along the way collects in your course on one page.
The route
Your course on one page
The activities in the course collect what you write about your own course here: one page you can copy, download and take into the next meeting. It is saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere. To keep it, save a backup file (below).
Keep your work: a backup file
Everything you write in the course, on every page, is saved in this browser only. It will not be there if you continue on another computer or in another browser, and it is gone if you clear your browsing data or use a private window. Safari also deletes it after seven days of use without a visit to the course.
So save a backup file now and then, for example at the end of each session, and load it wherever you continue. The file holds only what you wrote, and it stays with you: nothing is sent anywhere. The Word file above is for reading and sharing; the backup file is for continuing in the course.
What you will be able to do
These are the course’s own intended learning outcomes, written in the three categories of the European Qualifications Framework: knowledge, skills, and responsibility and autonomy. They are pitched at EQF level 7, the level of a master’s degree. The last page of the course comes back to them, so you can check where you stand.
Knowledge
- You can explain how the elements of the didactic relation model depend on one another.
- You can discuss which ideas from the course support your own view of teaching and learning, and which challenge it.
Skills
- You can plan a course, weighing how each element affects the others.
- You can design outcomes, activities and assessment so that students practise and show what the outcomes describe, even when they use generative AI.
Responsibility and autonomy
- You can justify a deliberate choice about what your course is for, where what you value diverges from what the course is asked to do.
- You can develop your course over time, deciding what to change and why.
Categories after the Council Recommendation of 22 May 2017 on the European Qualifications Framework, Annex II. In the Norwegian framework (NKR) the third category is called generell kompetanse.
Analyse your course: a working document
The analysis guide is a Word document for work on paper, or with a colleague at the same table. It takes a course you teach through the model, a page for each of the seven elements and then six questions across the whole course, with boxes to write in by hand or on screen. The questions are the ones on the pages. Your browser makes the file, so nothing is sent anywhere.
How the course works
- Five parts, eight steps. Each part opens with a short film, and each step is one element of a course, with hands-on workshops and optional deep dives along the way. Follow the route in order, or start with the element you are working on: the model has no fixed order, and the route is one reasonable path through it.
- Finding your way. The bar at the top of every page says why the step matters, and ⌂ brings you back here. The foot of the page shows how the step connects to the others, then takes you to the previous or the next page.
- Keep a course of your own in mind. Every step ends with an activity on it, and with two questions about generative AI: what it changes in that element, and how it can help you work on it. The questions work as reflection even if you write nothing; what you write collects in your course on one page, above.
- Go as deep as you like. Reading the pages takes about four hours; with the activities and the deep dives you can spend 20 to 30. Each page starts from situations you know from teaching, explains its terms as they come, and names its sources, so you can read further where something catches your interest.
- No login, nothing to install. What you write is saved in your own browser and sent nowhere. Save a backup file now and then to keep it, and to continue on another computer.
- Three games. Fog Patrol, Verb Rush and Course Captain each close a theme, offered at the foot of its last page, and all three are on the games page. They take a few minutes each and end with a review of what you decided.
- Teaching the course with a group? The teacher’s guide has three ways to run it, a session plan with in-class tasks and further reading for every step, and a suggested final product. Each page also has the task folded away at its foot, under “Using this step with a group”.
About
The course is built on the Nordic didactic relation model (Bjørndal & Lieberg, 1978; Hiim & Hippe, 1993), changed to put the purpose at the core and to include constructive alignment (Biggs & Tang). The model page, step 1, tells the story at the end: what we kept, what we changed, and the words old and new. Both books are in Norwegian and have not been translated into English, so the course gives their ideas in English, with page references, and suggests further reading in English.
Developed by Kaspar Bredahl Rasmussen, Nord University, for SEA-EU Task 2.2 as part of D2.1, Digital sharing of innovative tools and pedagogies.