The course works on its own, and it works as material for teaching university pedagogy with a group.
This guide is for educational developers and teachers of university pedagogy who want to use it with others: in a course or workshop on university teaching, a department’s development day, or a peer group of colleagues. Participants work through the pages before each session. The session is for what a page cannot do on its own: trying ideas on each other’s courses, disagreeing, and deciding what to change.
How the course works for participants
- Eight steps, each on one part of a course, from the purpose to the assessment, with an introduction to constructive alignment and a closing page that reads the parts together. Deep dives go further into single topics and are optional.
- Every step ends with an activity on the participant’s own course. What they write gathers in their “course on one page” on the course home.
- Everything is saved in the participant’s own browser, and nothing is sent anywhere. You cannot see their work. Ask them to copy or download their course on one page before each session, and to bring it. Ask them also to save a backup file at the end of each session (on the course home, under “Your course on one page”): browsers can delete what is saved, and a participant who changes computer needs the file to continue.
- Generative AI runs through the course. Every step asks what AI changes in that part of a course and how it can help with planning. Remind participants never to paste student work or personal data into AI tools.
Three ways to run it
Step by step
About ten sessions, one for each step, the introduction to constructive alignment and the closing page. Before each session participants spend an hour or two on the page and its activity; the session itself uses the in-class task below.
By part
Four longer sessions: orientation and purpose; the conditions (steps 03–05); the learning design (constructive alignment and steps 06–08); the whole again. Pick one or two tasks from each step in the part.
On their own, with peer groups
Participants work through the course alone and meet in small groups three times: after the purpose, after the learning design, and at the end, using the tasks for those steps.
The in-class tasks take 30 to 60 minutes each. Each step also has a short “Why this step” and “Ask yourself” at the top of its page, which work well as openers.
A working document for sessions
For sessions on paper, or for participants who prefer Word, the analysis guide takes one course through the model element by element and ends with six questions across the whole course. The questions are the ones on the pages. Participants can fill it in before a session, or work through it in pairs during one.
The session plan
For each step: what participants do before the session, a task for the session, and further reading. The same material is folded away at the foot of each page, under “Using this step with a group”.
A final product
Each participant ends with four things, most of them made along the way:
- their course on one page, from the course home;
- their first sketch from the model page next to what they would write now, from the closing page;
- a short reflection: which ideas from the course support their view of teaching and learning and which challenge it, and the one change they will make first, why, what can wait, and how they will find out whether it worked (the closing page has a box for each part);
- a short map: each of their outcomes, the activity that practises it and the assessment that shows it.
In a credit-bearing course, these can be assessed against the course’s own six intended learning outcomes, pitched at EQF level 7 and listed on the course home:
| Outcome | Worked on in | Evidence in the final product | Enough to pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Explain how the elements of the model depend on one another | 01 The model; the closing page | The course on one page, read as one design | Explains in their own words how the elements depend on one another, with an example from a course they know. |
| 2 · Discuss which ideas support and which challenge your own view | 02–05, constructive alignment, the deep dives | The reflection, drawing on the readings | Names at least one idea from the course that supports their view and one that challenges it, says why, and refers to a page or reading. |
| 3 · Plan a course, weighing how each element affects the others | 01 The model; every step; the closing page | The change walked round the model on the closing page; the course on one page | Follows at least one decision or change in their plan round the other elements, and says how they weighed what it does to them. |
| 4 · Design outcomes, activities and assessment so that students practise and show the outcomes, AI included | Constructive alignment, 06–08 | The map; the outcomes, activities and assessment on the course on one page | Each outcome passes the outcome check and has an activity that practises it and an assessment that shows it. The plan says what generative AI does to the evidence. |
| 5 · Justify a deliberate choice about the purpose | 02 Purpose | The purpose, the choice and the reasons for it on the course on one page | Names a real divergence, the choice made about it, and reasons drawn from their own values and from the frame they work in. |
| 6 · Develop the course over time: what to change, and why | The closing page; 03 Preconditions | The reflection: the change they will make first, and why | Names what they would change first and what can wait, with reasons, and says how they will notice whether the change worked. |
The last column is the threshold for a pass. Criteria for higher grades are yours to set.
Notes for facilitating
- Mixed disciplines are a strength. The running example on every page, a campus course that has to go online and asynchronous, gives the group a shared case to test ideas on.
- Start from the participants’ own courses. The tasks work best when everyone brings a real course, even one they are only planning.
- Language. Everything participants need is in English. The model comes from Norwegian didactics, and its central sources, Bjørndal & Lieberg (1978) and Hiim & Hippe (1993), have not been translated into English. The pages give what the course takes from them in English, with page references, and every further reading in the session plan is in English. Halse (2025) is an open-access account in English of the relation model and its critics, and a good first reading for the whole group. The originals are listed separately at the end, for participants who read a Scandinavian language.
- AI as a subject as well as a tool. The course discusses what generative AI changes, and neither bans nor promotes it. Participants who try the AI prompts on the pages should use their own course text only.
- Deep dives by interest. Point individuals to the deep dives that fit their questions rather than assigning them all.
All further reading
In English. Page numbers are given only where they have been checked.
The originals, in Norwegian, Swedish or Danish
For participants who read a Scandinavian language. Titles are glossed in English in square brackets.