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Tools for Teaching, by Barbara Gross Davis, offers a wealth of pragmatic and insightful tactics for designing, revising, and communicating with students about a course: Preparing or Revising a Course includes sections on defining and limiting course content, selecting textbooks and readings, setting course policies, and other administrative tasks. Creating a Syllabus lists twenty categories of information to consider including in a syllabus.

Radical Course Revision: A Case Study. In this article from the National Teaching and Learning Forum, Professor Julie Stout (Psychology, Indiana University) adapts principles from behavioral psychology in re-thinking course design, and includes sections on syllabus-building, linking grading to course goals, setting the right tone, and providing a safety net.

Course Planning and Teaching. This chapter, from Teaching at Carolina (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), offers two particularly useful templates: and Instructional Planning Chart (Figure 1), and a Taxonomy of Educated Objectives (Figure 2), based on Benjamin Bloom’s classic taxonomy. Additionally, the Focus of the Course section offers contrasting cases (Examples A and B) that distinguish between simply describing what will be covered in a course, and articulating specific learning outcomes.