Faculty Resources

Access resources, guidelines, and consultations for faculty from Seattle University's Center for Faculty Development, supporting professional growth and teaching excellence.

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The Center for Faculty Development provides a variety of resources for faculty, including forms, guidelines, evidence-based information, and practical recommendations. If you are looking for something that is not listed below, please contact us for assistance. If you would like to discuss any of the resources below with a Center for Faculty Development consultant, please complete our online consultation request form.

Permission is granted to educational institutions to print copies of Center for Faculty Development documents for internal use, provided that each copy acknowledges the authorship of the Center for Faculty Development. Online copies are not permitted, but links to our site are encouraged.

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Learning outcomes

Resources and guidance to support curriculum design

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Printables and Guidelines

The Center for Faculty Development provides a variety of printable resources to faculty, including forms, guidelines, and information sheets on a number of teaching and learning related topics. If you are looking for something that is not listed below, please contact us for assistance. If you would like to discuss any of the resources below with a Center for Faculty Development consultant, please complete our online consultation request form.

Permission is granted to educational institutions to print copies of Center for Faculty Development documents for internal use, provided that each copy acknowledges the authorship of the Center for Faculty Development. Online copies are not permitted, but links to our site are encouraged.

Curricular design

Check out our new page about

including an interactive introduction and all our documents on the topic. 

Writing good learning outcomes is the first step in the backward design process, following the educational model of "constructive alignment." You can read about constructive alignment here.

See also our separate pages on:

What do we suggest?

  • We suggest that we spend a little time in the first class of each course co-creating course “agreements” or guidelines with our students.

Why?

Agreements (also referred to as ground rules, guidelines, or norms) can help share responsibility for a constructive class environment, can contribute to trust, and promote belonging and inclusion (Addy et al., 2021; Ambrose et al., 2010; Brookfield & Preskill, 2005).

Commentary

Depending on the types of learning activities in our courses and on the topics we discuss, we can develop context-specific sets of agreements for class interaction.

Many of us at SU are doing this by co-constructing agreements with students in the first class, which can take 15-20 minutes. Sometimes, the subjects of our courses – particularly some social justice topics – may mean that it makes more sense for us to provide predetermined agreements to our students (University of Michigan CRLT, n.d.).

Two things to bear in mind are: (1) that agreements need to be ones that both students and faculty can follow (meaning that sometimes students will suggest agreements that we cannot support, so we can simply explain why that’s the case); and (2) the agreements need revisiting regularly (say, once a week) so that they stay fresh in students’ minds as they continue learning.

The University of Michigan’s CRLT provides example agreements as well as questions to consider as we decide which approach is going to work best for our courses.

Rubrics

Reprinted with permission from: Rhodes, T. L. (Ed.) (2010). Assessing outcomes & improving achievement. Washington, DC: AAC&U.

Reprinted with permission from: Rhodes, T. L. (Ed.) (2010). Assessing outcomes & improving achievement. Washington, DC: AAC&U.

Reprinted with permission from: Rhodes, T. L. (Ed.) (2010). Assessing outcomes & improving achievement. Washington, DC: AAC&U.