Teaching handbook

• Course Design

  Instructors at Wayne State University come to course design from multiple perspectives.  Sometimes you're handed a syllabus from someone who has taught it before and you don't have much lead time before the class launches.  Or maybe you're teaching a course with multiple sections and use a common syllabus where you don't have a lot of latitude in the course design.  And sometimes you might create the course from scratch.  The Course Design section of the Teaching Handbook provides resources and frameworks for course design.  Course design is not a linear and sequential process, it will often require reviewing, updating and improving on previous versions.  Wherever you are in the course design process we think these frameworks will help you be more confident and more efficient in your approach to teaching and learning.  Visit this section to learn more about:

  • learning outcomes 
  • backward course design
  • writing a syllabus
  • making courses inclusive
  • and more!
• Formative and summative assessment

  How do you know that your students have learned what you set out to teach them?  The short answer is assessment.  Although you may not have used this specific term before, if you have taught, chances are you have used assessment.  Have you given a test, assigned a project or presentation, or led a discussion and used what you learned to improve your teaching?  You have done assessment. The assessment section of the Teaching Handbook prives examples of assessment strategies and additional resources for formative and summative assessment for both students and instructors.  The Students sub-section includes ideas for classroom assessment techniques, rubrics, and responding to writing.  Use the Instructors sub-section for tips on administering and using the student evaluation of teaching and keeping a teaching journal.

  Assessment in higher education can be broadly defined as the process of gathering information about student learning to improve education.  At Wayne State, as with other universities, assessment is done at several levels:  university, school or college, program, course, concept, or individual learning objectives.  In the Office for Teaching and Learning, we are focused on course level assessment and below.  However, we encourage you to align your assessments with the needs of the program whenever possible.  The Academic Affairs office, which coordinates program assessment, is available to assist you with other forms of assessment.

• Campus Resources

  As an instructor, there are many policies and procedures you may need to know to properly run your course and advise students on their progress in the course.  This Campus Resources section introduces common processes used campus wide (such as participation confirmation and add/drop and instructional technologies) and available to you as an instructor.  Links are provided to the respective Wayne State offices where you can find more information.  Please note that there may also be department and college-based policies and procedures that will be essential to seek out for your success as an instructor.  The Office of the Registrar sub-section includes information about course participation confirmation, add/drop, and FERPA.  Use the Instructional Technologies sub-section to see all of the instructional technologies available to Wayne State instructors, such as iClicker, Echo360 recording, and Respondus test building software.