Appendix 5: Guidelines for an Ideal Course and Curriculum Development

As an archival continuing education provider, you have identified an educational need, perhaps through research and feedback from others, or through review of existing courses. A good first step for a prospective course instructor is to contact the provider and determine that your course idea is a good fit for the provider, in terms of content, delivery format, audience, and development timeline.

Consider addressing the following for your course, either in the course description or a more detailed syllabus

 Goals. What do you intend to accomplish? Create an overview. Each goal/purpose should be stated relative to the rationale behind the content.

Learning objectives. Use verbs that convey measurable behavioral objectives (e.g., registrants will be able to define [knowledge], classify [comprehension], calculate [application], appraise [analysis], assemble [synthesis], or determine [evaluation]). Each learning objective may be broken into subcategories that detail what will be discussed and what activities will take place. 

Outcomes. These should clearly identify how learning can be applied in the workplace

Intended level of experience of audience (introductory, intermediate, advanced, etc.).

 Required or recommended prerequisite knowledge, skills, or other courses taken.

Schedule/outline.

 Which techniques – teacher-centered (such as lectures) or student-centered (such as Think-Pair-Share or other group activities) – do you intend to use for each component?

 For courses longer than an hour, consider using a mix of techniques to keep students engaged.

Describe the exercises and case studies that you plan to incorporate.

When appropriate, do include practical activities that apply directly to real-world experiences. Examples include activities on appraising or describing archival materials, editing Wikipedia/Wikidata records, reviewing criteria for a grant application, curating digital records, etc.

For case studies, it is best to use cases based on personal experience wherever possible. Personal experience is much more compelling in an instructional situation than are generic examples, and instructors are strongly encouraged to bring their own case studies to the classroom.

Assigned pre-course readings.

Technology requirements, including any software needed for the course.

Delivery format.