INTRODUCTION: CURRICULUM AT CVTC

At CVTC, our curriculum is built on the idea of performance-based instruction (PBI), which means our students demonstrate their competency of skills as a result of our instruction. In order to facilitate this instruction, there are two key steps that need to completed:

You must understand the specifics of the curriculum (the content you will be covering in your courses).
You must communicate the competencies, guidelines, and expectations of your course to students through your syllabus.

After you complete these two steps, you can then move forward designing the learning experiences that you will facilitate as part of your instruction with your students. The goal is to ensure that the content of your instruction is aligned with the competencies of your course's curriculum as well as ensure students understand what will be expected of them from day one. In this lesson, we will focus on these two steps.

YOUR COS: THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR COURSE

What is a Course Outcome Summary?

The Course Outcome Summary (COS) is a document the contains the required curriculum for a course at CVTC. Each course has a Course Outcome Summary (COS). The course outcome summary contains the Course Competencies, or learning outcomes, that the students are expected to be able to demonstrate by the end of the course. These competencies are a direct result of input by program advisory committees, faculty, and may even be mandated by the state, depending on the course or program. This document acts as a blueprint for your course, and you must align your lessons to meet the competencies, objectives, and assessment strategies and criteria outlined in this document. All curriculum is part of a 5-year review-cycle to ensure that it stays current. However, if changes are made to state-mandated competencies, or major changes in the field occur, the curriculum may be updated more frequently.

Finding a Course Outcome Summary

All of CVTC's curriculum is archived in WIDS, a software used by Wisconsin Technical Colleges across the state. This allows a central point of access for all CVTC faculty and staff, and an easy place to go to when documentation of curriculum is needed for a program or institutional accreditation process. In the video below, you will see how to locate a Course Outcome Summary in WIDS.

LEARNING ACTIVITY: EXPLORING A COS

Please click on the link below, to review the Course Outcome Summary (COS) for the Microsoft Office Suite Course 103-102.

103-102 Microsoft Office Suite COS

As you review the document, identify the following components:

Required Materials/Course Text

This information will automatically feed into your course syllabus. All instructors teaching this course must utilize the text listed in the course outcome summary. If this text must be purchased by students, this textbook should have a textbook adoption on file with the CVTC bookstore.

Course Competencies

These are the big goals/outcomes that you have for your students. These are often identified by the program advisory committees, faculty, and sometimes by the state. These competencies automatically feed into the course syllabus. When students successfully complete a course, these are the outcomes that students should be able to successfully demonstrate on the job, or be proficient in before taking a subsequent course that requires the course as a pre-requisite. These are non-negotiable.

Learning Objectives

These are the steps that you are required to take to help the students meet the course competencies. As an instructor, you have flexibility in how you facilitate this.

Performance Standards

Performance standards are how you know that your student has achieved the competency or demonstrated they could perform the skill. Part of performance standards are the assessment strategies (i.e. the tool that will be used to assess/measure performance) and the assessment criteria (what will be measured during the assessment) to evaluate achievement or competence. All instructors teaching the course must use the same assessment criteria.