The primary components of a course are the learning goals and objectives, assessments, and instructional strategies.

Learning goals and objectives

All courses should start with the end in mind, whether they are face-to-face, online, or hybrid. Ask yourself:

• What do you want your students to know and understand? What do you want your students to be able to do?

Once you have established (or refined) the learning goals and objectives of your course, consider:

• How will you collect evidence that ALL of your students are learning?
• Which inclusive teaching and learning strategies will you implement that will allow for equitable student learning?

Course content

Once you have decided on the learning goals and objectives, you can turn your attention to the content of the course.

As the course content expert, instructors know what content should be included in their courses.  To prioritize content, Wiggins and McTighe suggest that content can be prioritized by dividing the course content into three major buckets:

• content that is essential for enduring understanding (essential questions, core tasks),
• content that is important to know and do; and
• content that is worth being familiar with.

All courses will include what is in the enduring understanding bucket and most of what is in the important to know and do bucket, but instructors may have to let go of some things in the worth being familiar with bucket – especially in a condensed course.