If you are anything like me, getting started on a project can be one of the hardest parts. No matter what the project – blog entry, journal article, or course development, the blank page often feels insurmountable. The use of LLMs, not to write for me, but to help me get started has been a game changer and has helped me to clear that first mental hurdle.

This is the first entry in what I hope to be a series of entries on using AI to help with course design and development. Again, this will not be to have the AI do the work for you, but to have it be a thinking and ideation partner to help reduce time and elicit better ideas for ways students can show what they have learned.

When I work with instructors developing new courses or revamping existing courses, they often experience this same feeling when asked to develop course learning objectives or a course outline. This is especially true for those who have been “voluntold” to develop a brand new course they had little to no input in the early conception phase or who have never taught a particular course they are updating.

They are given a course description that is not very descriptive or course objectives that are not measurable or written in student friendly language, and very little additional information. They might not really know what the goal of the course is, but this is where we start. We need to know what our goal is to know what individuals enrolled should be learning, however, this is not always easy to figure out and can be a struggle.

Using an LLM, like ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot can help to guide an instructor to what the goals or objectives of the course are. Here are a few suggestions for prompts that I have used in the past:

I would like to create course objectives for a graduate course titled “Insert Title Here” that is 3 credit hours and taught online asynchronously (adjust to match your modality). The course is about “Insert course description if available or describe what is known, you may want to include if this is an introductory or advanced course as well”. Can you help create 5 course objectives that are appropriate for the level of the course, that are measurable and written in student friendly language.

You may want to adjust this depending on the course description, if the course is part of a program and is required or is an elective. Once you hit submit you should be given five potential objectives, I have often found the objectives to be well written, use Bloom’s taxonomy, are specific, and written in student friendly language, avoiding a lot of the jargon that may be difficult to understand with little background knowledge on a subject.

These course level objectives will need to be modified, as they are not perfect, but you will have a starting point to help shape your course. You can always follow the prompts with additional information, such as “I like the second objective, but it needs to include…” or “I don’t think the fourth objective is applicable, could you write another objective related to…”.

Once you have your course learning objectives somewhat finalized, you may want to look at outlining the course. You might know some general topics you plan to include, but maybe you’re struggling with trying to decide the order or you are looking for additional ideas for what might be included in the course.

AI can help here, too! Creating a general course outline can help to identify the areas you might want to focus on. When I have or helped instructors do this, I suggest a prompt along the lines of:

Use the following course learning objectives and course description to help create a course outline. The course is X weeks, online (or face-to-face), and asynchronous (or synchronous).

Course Objectives: “insert objectives”

Course Description: “insert course description”

This will provide you with weekly topics, generally in an order that makes sense, but may need to be adjusted. Most of the time it will also give you subtopics for each week and activities that could be applicable as well. These can be great starters for later when developing assessments.

The final thing I will then suggest is using it to help draft weekly or module level objectives once you have set the topics, asking the LLM to help create weekly objectives will help you get to the point where you have goals set for the course and for each week in the course. When prompting, I ask it to provide at least three objectives for each week and to align them with the course objectives.

When I do this or work with faculty using AI to develop this backbone of their course, it is important to review everything and make sure it does align with the overall goals for your course that have been set. You may also need to look at university or department policies and requirements and if the course or program have accreditation standards that must be included.

Using AI to help create your course and module objectives and help to outline your course does not take away from the creativity you can bring to a course – but it can save you time and help you bring additional ideas to your course that you can expand on. This can help to save you time spent in the early phases of the course as well, it gives you a starting point.

How have you used AI to develop objectives or course outlines? Did you find it useful? What other topics would you like to see in this series of Design with the Machine?

Note the featured image was created using ChatGPT.