Overview of Instructional Design
Whether you are building a new course or refining one you have taught for years, these videos will help you teach with greater intention, transparency, and impact. Designing a course is more than organizing content. It is shaping an experience that moves students from curiosity to competence with purpose and clarity.
Instructional design gives you a practical framework. It connects program goals to daily teaching decisions, helps you identify what truly matters in a lesson, and ensures that learning activities and assessments support the outcomes you value. Rather than adding more to your plate, strong design reduces guesswork and brings focus.
This five-part playlist invites you to step back and see your course as a system. You will explore how alignment strengthens coherence across a program, how careful outcomes analysis clarifies what students need to know and do, how thoughtful lesson planning creates meaningful practice, how formative assessment guides reteaching and support, and how technology can be used strategically rather than cosmetically.
Session 1: Impact of Curricular AlignmentThis video pulls back the curtain on one of the most overlooked drivers of effective teaching: alignment. Curricular alignment is not just an accreditation buzzword or a program-level exercise happening somewhere above your course. It is the blueprint that tells you what truly matters.
When a program is clearly aligned, you do not have to guess what to emphasize, what to trim, or how deeply to teach a topic. The priorities are already mapped.
In this session, you will see how program outcomes flow into course outcomes and how curriculum mapping reveals where knowledge and skills are introduced, reinforced, and mastered. The result is clarity. Clarity about your role. Clarity about your focus. And clarity for students, who experience a program that builds intentionally rather than randomly.
If you have ever wondered, “How does my course fit into the bigger picture?” this video answers that question—and shows why alignment is the foundation of strong instructional design.
Session 2: Course Outcomes AnalysisOutcomes analysis helps you translate broad goals into specific, measurable knowledge and skills. Instead of thinking in terms of topics alone, you learn to define what students should understand, demonstrate, and apply by the end of a lesson. That clarity becomes the anchor for everything that follows - your activities, your assessments, and the level of rigor you expect.
In this session, you will see how to break outcomes into meaningful components, identify the depth of learning required, and align instruction to the performance you want students to achieve. The result is greater precision in your teaching and a clearer path for students to succeed.
When outcomes are well defined, teaching becomes more focused, feedback becomes more meaningful, and student learning becomes more visible.
Session 3: Lesson PlanningStrong courses are built one well-designed lesson at a time. In this session, you will explore how thoughtful lesson planning creates momentum for learning - capturing attention, building understanding, and giving students structured opportunities to practice. Drawing on Gagné’s principles and the learning cycle, the video shows how intentional sequencing and repeated practice move students from exposure to confidence.
You will see how engagement, guidance, application, and feedback work together to reinforce new knowledge and skills. The focus is not on adding more content, but on designing meaningful learning experiences that help students actually use what they are learning.
When lessons are planned with purpose and practice at the center, learning becomes active, cumulative, and far more durable.
Session 4: Timing of Formative AssessmentFormative assessment is not about grading more. It is about gathering meaningful evidence of learning while there is still time to adjust. In this session, you will see how intentional check-ins, low-stakes practice, and targeted feedback create a continuous loop between teaching and learning.
You will explore how to design opportunities that reveal what students understand, where misconceptions are forming, and when reteaching is needed. The emphasis is on responsiveness - using evidence to guide next steps so students can strengthen their skills before high-stakes evaluations.
When formative assessment is woven into a course, learning becomes visible, instruction becomes adaptive, and student success becomes far more attainable.
Session 5: Canvas Course BuildingOnce alignment, outcomes, lesson structure, and assessment are clearly defined, technology becomes a strategic partner rather than an afterthought. In this session, you will see how to translate sound instructional decisions into a well-organized, intuitive course experience using digital tools.
The focus is not on adding features for their own sake, but on selecting and structuring tools in ways that reinforce learning goals, guide student navigation, and support engagement. You will explore how thoughtful course construction strengthens clarity, consistency, and accessibility.
When technology is used with intention, it does more than host your content. It amplifies your design and creates a cohesive learning environment that supports student success from start to finish.