One of the best ways to start planning your course is by thinking about what you'd like your students to be able to do when they successfully complete it. At the same time, it is good to envision how they should demonstrate their new knowledge or skill. What your students are able to do as a result of taking the course are the learning outcomes of the course. Both terms refer to the notion of a course, that is, they focus not just on the content to be covered, but also on the skills, abilities, beliefs, and attitudes that result upon completion of the course.

It is important to place your learning objectives on your course's front page so that they are constantly in the mind of your students. Here is an example from the course, Trends in Tourism. Notice how the learning objectives appear on the front page, and they are accompanied by a photo to help...

Before we start to expand the course, we recommend that you take a moment to plan your course so that it complies with standards and recommendations that have been set to accommodate students' diverse needs and abilities. To do so, we will follow what is referred to as the UDL, which are guidelines that assure accessibility services for individuals with disabilities.

In this section, we will look at legal requirements but keep in mind that the UDL has its roots in ethics, human dignity, and the belief that all individuals deserve to have access to education.

However, in returning to legal frameworks that assure accessibility services to individuals who may have disability issues, let's remember that we must comply with the laws and regulations that have been enacted to provide equal access to them. In the United States, the Americans with...

Let's return to our course. Now that you can write effective learning outcomes and have used them to build your course framework, which is structured around topics, let's return to adding resources and activities and let's look at matching learning activities with resources and activities.

Let's return to Topic 1: New Definitions of Tourism. Let's say that we want to start by adding content that helps define tourism. What might that include? Here are our options from the pull-down menu that says Add a resource. Note that there is another pull-down menu next to it that says Add an activity. Keep in mind that we are using the Boost theme and that there may be slight variations with other themes:

So, we could choose to add a file which consists of an article with examples of tourism. Or we could create...

Moodle provides a wide array of options as you determine the best way to let your students demonstrate that they have achieved the knowledge, skills, and abilities that the learning outcomes have defined.

If you've kept in mind the key questions, "What do I want my students to do?" and "How will they show their skills, knowledge, attitudes, and abilities?", you will find that it will be much easier to develop the appropriate assessment strategy. The following are a few guidelines:

• Make sure that each topic's assessment ties directly to the learning outcome for that particular topic. Your assessment should be of sufficient complexity to allow your students to demonstrate that they have achieved the learning outcome.
• Each of your resources and activities need to connect both to the learning outcome, as well as the assessment.
• Try...

In this chapter, we've learned the best way to write learning outcomes for your course and use them to shape the structure of your course and select resources, activities, and assessments. We explained how and why following the UDL enables students with disabilities to take and succeed in the courses, while also complying with legally mandated regulations. We have also reviewed how those learning outcomes (and objectives) affect the selection of resources and activities in your course. In addition, we have described how the type of assessments you use throughout your course will help demonstrate the student's mastery/achievement in the course.

In the next chapter, we will guide you through organizing your course. We'll take a close look at how best to match the organization of your course with the overall purpose of the course, and the types of students...