New Course Proposal

Instructional Designer: Donelle Staples

Description: What will this course be about? Where/how will it be taught?

Common Assessment for Student Learning will be offered to teaching staff within a
professional learning community to develop unit assessments, both formative and
summative, to align with the New Illinois Learning Standards (Common Core
Standards). This course will provide education and training regarding the
understanding of methodology, key terminology and specific steps to successfully
participate in the backward unit design process while aligning assessments to a
curricular unit as evaluating results for student improvement.
The course is developed for asynchronous professional development training for
teams of teachers within an independent or consolidated district.
The design of the course will be constructed for student-centered learning.
Knowledge-centered learning approaches will be implemented to apprise students
(teachers) of collaborative processes to improve student learning. Learner-center
activities will be offered to encourage synthesis of prior knowledge with new
content to promote future learning. Students (teachers) will be active learners in
identifying and unwrapping power standards, chosen through consensus within a
professional learning community, along with generating assessment-centered
artifacts for formative and summative assessments. Analysis of data will be a
cornerstone for improvement and reflection. Purposeful interaction between team
members will promote a community-centered environment whether asynchronous
or through a hybrid model.

Learners: Who are the learners? What do you know about them that might
make a difference in what you design? (Think about age, prior knowledge,
familiarity with technology)
The audience for this course contains K-8 teaching staff, yet could be expanded for
K-12 educators. All staff have completed and Educator Licensure in the State of
Illinois, some possessing an advanced degree. Technology skills such as computer
literacy and program navigation may vary in degree from basic to advanced based
upon the user. Students (teachers) may or may not be familiar with the course
content, yet all possess a basic understanding of terminology such as common core
standards, formative and summative assessments and curriculum. Students
(teachers) may not be familiar with identifying or unwrapping power standards.

Form adapted from Smith, R. M. Conquering the Content. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2008.

Things that you want to accentuate in your course. This can be related to what
or how you teach, how students respond, or about the technology. What do you
want to see happen in this course?
The course content will focus on the role of a Professional Learning Community
(PLC) to assist teachers to be able to identify and select appropriate power
standards for a unit, use a step by step procedure for developing common formative
and summative assessments for such unit and the analysis of data to response to
student learning to encourage further growth. Familiarity through participation
within the process and basic understanding are the objectives.

Problems that youd like to avoid in your course. Based on past experience, what
would you predict will drag you down? It could be technology, disinterested
students, lack of discussion, etc.
Problems that I would like to avoid which may impede student learning for this
course include:

Technological platform issues such in regards to file downloads, viewing of

supporting content, navigation with computer software needed for
participation

Activities without examples.

Too much information to cause confusion.

Ambiguous information.

Reluctance to share data

What might be the most problematic aspect of this course as you teach it?
I anticipate the most problematic aspect of this course will be the following:
Teachers level of apprehension/unfamiliarity with unwrapping power
standards to create assessments.

The most time consuming aspect of this course as you teach it will be:
Reading student discussion post and responding to them.
Timely feedback to students on weekly assignments and/or projects.

Form adapted from Smith, R. M. Conquering the Content. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2008.

Anticipated Modifications:
Access to free collaboration sites if shared network access is unavailable for
collaboration
Job aid templates have been generated if textbook access is unavailable for
retrieval
Absorb activities include a variety of links to understand content in event
textbook is unavailable
Course content could be modified if teaching teams are unavailable, meaning
the process could be learned and applied within an individual setting
without the collaboration if necessary
Timely feedback to students on weekly assignments and/or projects.

Form adapted from Smith, R. M. Conquering the Content. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2008.