You finish the course with a clear sense of what you'd change. A few months later, preparation begins again, and you remember only that something about the second project needed work.
The handbook recommends a post-semester planning step while the experience is fresh. You don't need to build the next course immediately. Leave yourself a clear account of the problem, a few priorities, and the materials you'll need.
Review more than one source of information
Look at student feedback, permitted work samples, peer observations, and your own teaching notes. Identify repeated difficulties and useful strengths. A demanding assignment may still serve an important goal, while a popular activity may need a clearer connection to learning.
Ask what the evidence actually tells you before choosing a change.
Choose a small set of priorities
Separate necessary updates from improvements you'd like to explore. Fix an inaccurate instruction or broken link first. Then choose a learning problem that deserves attention next time.
A list of twenty ambitions can make the next offering feel harder before you begin. Give the most important work enough space to happen.
Turn each priority into a decision
If students struggled with an assignment, decide whether to revise the prompt, add practice, clarify the criteria, or change the sequence. Explain why that response fits the problem. Decide what you'll examine after the next group tries it.
Keep a question open when the evidence doesn't yet support a confident answer.
Plan materials around the purpose
Update readings, examples, media, and activities where the learning goal requires it. Check access, relevance, and the preparation time involved. A new format is useful when it helps students do the work, not simply because it's new.
Seek the required approvals for changes to prescribed course elements.
Check the whole sequence
Make sure the syllabus, course site, assignments, criteria, and feedback schedule agree. A revised task can affect the practice students need beforehand and the time you'll need to assess it.
Look at your other responsibilities before committing to a major redesign. Identify support you can appropriately request.
Leave a starting point
Put the planning note where you'll open the course materials next time. Include the priority, evidence, proposed action, and unresolved questions. Link the relevant files so the note leads directly to the work.
Identify what you can decide now and what needs another look
Some revisions are clear: a broken link needs repair or an instruction needs the missing first step. Other questions need more information. If students struggled with an assessment, you may need to examine the preparation, the task, and the criteria before choosing a response.
Mark those uncertainties in the planning note instead of forcing an immediate answer. Record what evidence or conversation would help and when you'll return to it. A useful plan can contain an open question as long as the next action is visible.
Also keep the workload in view. A proposed change may require new materials, an approval, or support from an instructional designer. Note those dependencies before promising a redesigned course. When the next offering approaches, you'll know which work can begin directly and which requests need lead time. That's a more useful gift to your future self than a long list of improvements with no starting point.
Set aside twenty minutes before the semester disappears into the next deadline. Write one thing to keep, one thing to change, and the first action for that change. Your next offering can begin with a decision instead of a search through old memories.
Adapted from The New Faculty Handbook by Zafer Unal, pp. 61-64.
