ABSTRACT
Not long ago, it would have been difficult to find a book about how to design college courses, and given the paradigm that seemingly dominated American higher education for much of the 20th century, it is no wonder. College-level teaching has historically used what has been called an “instruction-centered paradigm” (Barr & Tagg, 1995, p. 12). In this paradigm, a college professor’s primary task in the classroom is to deliver instruction, literally to profess his or her knowledge of a particular discipline to students who were expected to absorb the material. 1 1 In this instruction-centered paradigm, course design was relatively straightforward. All professors needed to do was to divide their disciplinary knowledge into a series of discrete class sessions and perhaps sprinkle in an exam or two to fulfill the administrative requirement of assigning grades. That was about it when it came to designing courses.
