A Course Builder for WFU SPS · Async Online

Start with the destination. Design backward to get there.

A Wiggins & McTighe-style intake — woven with Bloom's Taxonomy, ADDIE, and the four async-learning engagement pillars — that turns thirty minutes of your time into an 8-module outline, a WFU SPS-format syllabus, a Canvas module map, weekly video scripts, a curated source kit, and a 90-minute faculty quickstart.

Inside the Studio

Three stages, four lenses, one coherent course.


The Studio walks you through Wiggins & McTighe's Backward Design — start with the desired results, then determine acceptable evidence, then plan the learning experiences. Four additional lenses ride underneath: Bloom's revised taxonomy, ADDIE phases, the four async engagement pillars, and a traffic-light AI policy.

Course design on a laptop
Your workshop · the Studio meets you here
01
Stage One · Desired Results

Where are we going?


  • Big ideas. The durable concepts students should still hold five years from now.
  • Essential questions. Open, recurring, provocative — they drive inquiry, not closure.
  • Course-level outcomes, written with Bloom verbs (interactive verb bank baked into the wizard).
  • The "so what." Why this course matters beyond the classroom — named contexts, decisions, audiences.
02
Stage Two · Acceptable Evidence

How will we know?


Tim Duncan
"You have to adjust to what your team needs and what you're able to do."— Tim Duncan
03
Stage Three · Learning Plan

How do we get there?


  • Eight weekly topics, each with an essential question — built to scaffold toward the signature task.
  • Pedagogy preferences rotated through the weekly activity scaffold.
  • Workload tuned to graduate norms (an average of 18 hours per week, distributed across 3–4 check-ins).
The Method
Rapid Design
From a blank brief to seven downloadable artifacts — a complete course package, ready for your refinement.
The Four Lenses

The frameworks that ride underneath.


Backward Design provides the spine. These four lenses sharpen each stage — making outcomes measurable, weekly design rhythmic, and the AI policy practical rather than punitive.

01

Bloom's verb bank

Six levels — Remember through Create — with eight verbs each. Tap a verb to insert it into a CLO. The syllabus and outline pill each outcome with its detected level.

How it shows upInteractive verb bank in Stage 1 of the wizard.
02

ADDIE phases

Weeks tagged with their phase — early weeks Analyze/Design, middle weeks Develop, late weeks Implement/Evaluate. Catches "all build, no transfer" before week one.

How it shows upLens chips on every weekly outline card.
03

Four engagement pillars

Discussion, active practice, formative assessment, feedback. Async courses fail predictably without all four — pre-seeded as your weekly evidence mix.

How it shows upPre-seeded "Other Evidence" in Stage 2; rotated weekly.
04

Traffic-light AI policy

Per assessment, not per course. Green encourages it, yellow asks for disclosure, red forbids it. Three short policy lines you write once.

How it shows upColor-coded blocks in the syllabus output.
At a Glance

Eight artifacts in one sitting.


When you reach the end of the wizard, every artifact is generated from your answers and previewed in tabs. Use the gold buttons to save standalone files — every output is a starting draft you can edit, paste into Canvas, or hand to Claude for further refinement.

ArtifactWhat it does for youFormat
8-Week OutlineWeekly outcomes mapped to course CLOs. Bloom level, ADDIE phase, and engagement pillar per week. Catches orphan outcomes before week 1.HTML
WFU SPS SyllabusDMG-format section order. Warm, student-centered tone. Traffic-light AI policy with disclosure example. Tiered tech-support table.HTML
Canvas Module MapThe fixed SPS scaffold plus your unique weekly modules — drop into Canvas with the correct page hierarchy.HTML
Rubrics4-level analytic rubrics for the signature task (using your criteria), the four engagement pillars, and the Module 8 capstone reflection. Process-aware criteria included.HTML
Materials GuidePer-week curated searches against open repositories. Accessibility checklist baked into every week.Markdown
Video ScriptsEight scripts sized to your video format. Cold open → build → re-think → apply → close. Captions and transcripts required.Markdown
Faculty Quickstart90-minute pre-flight checklist with three AI co-designer prompts and a Bloom-level check on your CLOs.Markdown
Course BriefEvery input you supplied, packaged as one re-loadable JSON. Drop into Claude later to revise scripts, expand rubrics, or generate any artifact again.JSON
The SPS Scaffold

What's fixed in every course, and what's unique to yours.


Students learn the rhythm of the program in week one and lean on it the rest of the term. Two modules are fixed at the front — one internal-only, one student-facing — eight content modules are unique to your course, and a closing Reflection and Application module ties the term together.

A

Course Developer Notes (Unpublished)

Six internal-only pages: developer notes, Canvas review orientation, Getting Started with Canvas, live-session options, suggested live-session topics, and gradebook late-policy directions.

B

Module 1: Getting Started

Seven templated student-facing pages: Welcome, Meet the Lead Faculty (your bio), What to Expect & How to Succeed, Live Sessions (your schedule), Student Resources, Who to Contact, Ask the Instructor.

C

Modules 1–7: your seven

Same five-page template each module — X.0 Overview, X.1 Learning Materials, X.2 Discussion (Pillar 1), X.3 Assignment (Pillar 2/3), X.4 Optional Extension. Students learn it once, lean on it weekly.

D

Module 8: Reflection & Application

Capstone reflection: what did you learn, what will you do differently in your work, how will you know it worked. 1,200–1,500 words plus a 90-second loom-style video.

"Backward design is the framework. You're still the instructor."
The Studio's Operating Principle

Let's create a great course!


The Studio drafts. You decide. Every artifact is a starting point — edit it, contradict it, throw half of it out. The framework is what holds; everything else is yours to shape.