The Vellum Review
For Professors × Professors posts tagged Course Design.
Most faculty design courses forward: topics first, assignments last. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe spent decades arguing against this. Here is why they were right, and what faithful implementation actually requires.
Both the professor and the students are responding rationally to the situation in front of them. That is what makes this so hard to fix.
Students shouldn't have to email you to find out basic course logistics. If they're asking about points, drops, or response times, those numbers aren't in your syllabus.
The classroom has become an unexpected frontline. Not because faculty chose that role, but because the infrastructure for doing anything else does not exist. Here is what the research says and what teaching design actually looks like when it accounts for what students are carrying.
You already know student evaluations are imperfect. But the research from 2022 to 2025 goes much further than 'imperfect,' and the findings should change how every institution thinks about teaching feedback.
Every semester, you open a blank document and start building. Again. What would change if you stopped?
8 foundational learning-science books plus a 15–30 minute retrieval + spacing upgrade for one unit.