High Structure Course Design: An Evidence-Based Guide for Designing, Implementing, and Assessing STEM Courses
Justin’s forthcoming book from the Macmillan Learning Scientific Teaching Series (to be released in March / April 2025) walks the reader through all of the steps necessary to create, implement, and assess a high structure STEM course.
Essential Topics
The book covers essential and relevant topics for designing your own high structure course from scratch or redesigning an existing course. Chapters include:
Chapter 1: Overview of high structure course design
Chapter 2: Backward design and learning objectives
Chapter 3: Syllabus design and clear communication
Chapter 4: Summative assessment and student learning
Chapter 5: Pre-class activities and assessments
Chapter 6: In-class activities and assessments
Chapter 7: After-class activities and assessments
Chapter 8: High structure course design for lab, online, and field courses
Chapter 9: Evaluation of course design and teaching
Chapter 10: Studying your course design: Introduction to DBER
Rooted in evidence
The course design, teaching, and assessment strategies presented in this book are based on hundreds of references from the STEM education literature and have been shown to improve student outcomes in a myriad of ways.
Practical and applicable
The book comes with many templates and real-world examples from Justin’s own courses so that you can easily apply the strategies you are learning about to you own lessons and courses.
Written in an approachable voice
This book is written in the same friendly, enthusiastic, and approachable voice that Justin uses in his workshops and teaching and will keep you motivated and engaged while you are reading and working to improve your teaching and course design skills.