Course outlines
Course outlines are critical resources for students, and are particularly important for enabling students to understand the course aims, learning outcomes and assessment.
For teachers, the course outline helps facilitate implementation of the
Guidelines on Learning that Inform Teaching at UNSW, including Guideline 10:
Clearly articulated expectations, goals, learning outcomes, and course requirements increase student motivation and improve learning.
The outline presents an opportunity to contextualise these goals, learning outcomes, and course requirements by demonstrating their relevance to professional and disciplinary contexts. The relationship between individual learning outcomes and the UNSW Graduate Attributes or faculty-specific graduate attributes can also be articulated in the course outline.
Research and feedback reveals that students use course outlines to make informed decisions about course choices and to manage their combined course workloads during Session. The way that students initially use course outlines reflects the fact that assessment is usually at the forefront of their perception of the learning and teaching process.
The UNSW Course Outline Template provides a framework that can be adapted in response to the needs of programs and individual courses. The template is not intended to be prescriptive. You may choose to format your course outline in the manner suggested by the template, or the template could be used as a checklist for the content that will be included in the outline. The template will be useful tool for staff undertaking the design and development of new courses or those who may be revising existing courses.
The latest version of the UNSW Course Outline Template can be downloaded as an interactive Word document. A number of faculties have used the UNSW Course Outline Template to design faculty-specific templates to support staff in the preparation of their course outlines, and these are accessible in the resources section below.
An effective course outline will be one that students can consult in response to questions and queries as they arise throughout the Session.
Course outlines can form part of the evidence of your effectiveness in learning and teaching, particularly in relation to the planning and development of courses.
Support is available from Learning & Teaching through individual consultations and occasional workshops. Writing course outlines is also a topic explored in UNSW Network in Learning and Teaching (UNILT) workshops. For further information and support, please contact the L&T@UNSW on extension 55989 or e-mail lt@unsw.edu.au.
Australian School of Business Course Outline Template
Faculty of Medicine Course Outline Template
Di Adams, "Writing and Reviewing Unit Outlines and Learning Outcomes", Centre for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Scholarship, University of Canberra, 2004