Center for Learning & Teaching

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowing? What do we want students to understand and be able to do? What enduring knowledge is worth understanding? How will we know that students truly understand and can apply knowledge in a meaningful way? How can we design our courses and units to emphasize understanding and "uncoverage" rather than "coverage"? Understanding by Design explores these questions and provides practical solutions for the teacher-designer.

Learn to integrate writing, critical thinking and active learning and incorporate them into your courses in a way that encourages inquiry, exploration, discussion, and debate. This is a practical nuts-and-bolts guide for teachers from any discipline, showing how to design interest-provoking activities for your courses. Features new material dealing with genre and discourse community theory, quantitative/scientific literacy, blended and online learning, and other current issues.

When it was first published, The Course Syllabus became the gold standard reference for both new and experienced college faculty. Like the first edition, this book is based on a learner-centered approach. Today's syllabus provides details about course objectives, requirements and expectations, and also includes information about teaching philosophies, specific activities and the rationale for their use, and tools essential to student success.

This book shows college instructors how to communicate their course organization to students in a graphic syllabus a one-page diagram, flowchart, or concept map of the topical organization and an outcomes map a one-page flowchart of the sequence of student learning objectives and outcomes from the foundational through the mediating to the ultimate. It also documents the positive impact that graphics have on student learning and cautions readers about common errors in designing graphic syllabi.