Since we apply the Quality Matters (QM) rubric to the review of our courses, we typically view the interactions between the elements of the course as “alignment”—the idea that these pieces all flow through or stem from one another, allowing a reviewer and instructor to see the connection of these elements throughout the course. While we have various ways of demonstrating this alignment (numbering and sub-numbering, parenthetical reference, etc.), these tend to be used internally, mostly shared between the instructor, the instructional designer, and the review teams. Rarely do we share this full concept of alignment with students—but why? If we build for structure and scaffolding of the lessons throughout the course, wouldn’t it also be beneficial to students to see ways of connecting the various course objectives with the module objectives, readings, assessments, and other activities?

As I begin work on launching a new online program in the college I serve, I’m working toward making that alignment more visible to all participants in the course, though primarily for students. Since this should be something incredibly easy to access, this can’t be done through obscure associations or long-form written explanations. What we need is a quick glance method of ordering information and association between various parts of the course—patterns that become ingrained in the student’s understanding of their work throughout the course. Two of the simplest approaches I know of to convey that quick glance information are through color and icons.

Using our backward design approach, I’ll be starting with the course level objectives—setting up icons and a table with specific colors highlighting each objective that can then be repeated with the tables for the module level objectives. These associations can then be carried forward in the header of the assignment descriptions, discussion prompts, and reading lists—making clear how the course objectives will relate to these elements and support the module level objectives.

But why does it matter that these connections are so apparent, and will students even care that they are there? The associations will make it clear where and when various concepts appear in the course, helping to create transfer between lectures, readings, and assignments in one module to the next, since even when a student doesn’t yet know to make connection between the concepts they have learned in earlier modules with the ones they’re currently working through, the module descriptions, readings, and assignments will offer a suggestion or reminder of those connections through a familiar icon or a slight color highlighting of the objective statement. A student might not fully grasp the connections, but they are at least aware that they do need to work to integrate these concepts with one another.

Ultimately, the goal of these alignments, icons, colors, or whatever way we represent them is to show the complexity between the skills we are expecting the students to incorporate into their experiences and the different problem sets or assignments we design into the course.

In isolation, these skills are likely easy to apply to a straight-forward situation or assignment and students could spot the skill we are calling for from a mile away—yet as we add more complexity to the assignments, as the expectations for length, intricacy, and completeness of the projects expand, the difficulty in applying the multitude of skills called for increases too. Having clear and recognizable alignment means that there’s a roadmap of sorts—maybe it doesn’t provide the exact path, since we don’t want to give students access to the answers too easily (so as to negate the experience of thinking through the problem and the internalization and transfer of skills), but it does provide a sort of check list the student can make in approaching new situations that don’t match the prior problem sets.

This type of scaffolding and transfer became crystal clear for me recently when I came across the Twitter account of Captain Sully Sullenberger marking the 10-year anniversary of his Miracle on the Hudson experience of landing an aircraft on the Hudson river after losing both engines. In describing the actions he and the copilot had taken in the cockpit, he said “This was a novel event that we had never trained for. In our flight simulators it was not possible to practice a water landing. Yet, I was able to set clear priorities. I took what I did know, adapted it, and applied it in a new way to solve a problem I’d never seen before.”

In just 234 characters, Sullenberger has summed up the exact approach we want our students to take after graduating. While the work many of our students are doing likely won’t be life and death as Sullenberger’s was, they will likely be facing big problems with real deadlines. We can’t possibly prepare them for every single scenario and situation they will see in their careers, but we can ask them to think through novel problem sets and make the connections between the various parts of their experience and education to bring their existing skillsets to the forefront. Like Sullenberger, they need to develop a checklist of steps to quickly assess as the problem evolves, noting where one approach will or will not work and pivoting to the next area, or relying on a combination of various approaches that might not be apparent in other scenarios.

By way of comparison, the alignment of the various course activities, set out with clear icons and color coding is like a well-designed instrument panel in an aircraft—the important pieces of information are readily visible when they are needed. We might not be looking at those instruments all the time, but as the situation becomes more and more complex, these elements are there to reorder our thought processes and align the skills we have to the problems we face, whether or not we’ve trained for the specific scenarios.