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Course outline design working backward from assessments
Design a course/unit outline for course_topic over duration using backward design: start from what students need to be able to DO by the end, then build the sequence backward from there.
Final assessment or capstone (what students will ultimately be evaluated on): final_assessment_description
Starting point (what students know/can do at the beginning): starting_knowledge
Do this:
1. Break the final assessment down into the specific sub-skills or knowledge pieces a student needs to succeed at it, be exhaustive, don't skip a skill because it seems obvious.
2. Sequence those sub-skills in the order they need to be taught, considering genuine prerequisite dependencies (skill B can't be taught before skill A if B requires A), not just a logical-seeming topic order.
3. Identify the 1-2 sub-skills most likely to become bottlenecks, where students who don't nail this early skill will struggle with everything built on top of it, and flag that these need extra time/checking before moving on.
4. Build in at least one formative checkpoint partway through where I can verify students are actually ready to move to the next dependent skill, not just assume time-on-topic equals readiness.
5. Give me a rough time allocation across the sequence, weighted toward the bottleneck skills identified in step 3, not evenly split by default.