The first two chapters of this book have presented two key ideas: all teaching should strive to create
significant learning experiences, and it is useful to have a taxonomy— a language and set of concepts—
for identifying what constitutes such experiences. If one accepts the associated premise that higher
education is and ought to be moving toward a learning-centered approach, then the question arises,
How can teachers do a better job of creating significant learning experiences for students?
The answers to this question obviously have several important components, but it is clear that if
professors want to create courses in which students have significant learning experiences, they must
learn how to design that quality into their courses. Unless a course is designed properly, all the other
components of effective teaching will have only limited impact.
This chapter and the following one will present ideas on how to design courses that will
generate powerful learning experiences for students and fulfill those deep dreams that faculty have for
their teaching (as described in Chapter One). The present chapter will lay out some general ideas
about designing courses, introduce a new model of the course design process, and then walk readers