Always discuss any bigger changes you want to make to your course or materials with your supervisor, programme director and/or education director. Changes in one course will have an impact on other courses and the programme management should be aware of your plans.

Consult the vision and strategic plan to understand the bigger picture of education at our faculty. Keep in mind the rules and regulations. Not everything you might want to change, can be changed. 

Once you have the go-ahead to make changes to your education, you should...

• Analyse the place of your educational component in the curriculum.
  • Which knowledge and skills do students already gain before they come to you? Which knowledge and skills do they need in the courses that follow yours? What is the level of the course?  
• Evaluate the target group.
  • What are important characteristics of the students taking the course? How can they be addressed properly? 

If you are starting an educational design from scratch, continue with step 5. 

If you want to change an existing course or component, complete step 4 first. 

In order to redesign an existing component, answer the questions below.

• What is the current situation and why is it not desirable?
• What are your ideas for improving the course or educational component?
• How much time do you estimate is necessary to make the changes?
• When does the new version of the course or component need to be ready?
• Which other parties do you need to consult for permission or support? 

Once you have completed steps 1 through 4, you can contact SEEDS to support you during the redesign. Include your answers to the questions in your mail.

What do you want students to know and be able to do by the end of your course and/or educational component?

Open the learning objective guidelines (on the right) to formulate clear and measurable learning objectives. The guidelines also include an overview of de English and Dutch verbs of Bloom's taxonomy. These verbs are organised across five cognitive levels and using them will help you with aligning your activities and assessment to your objectives. 

You can also use the learning objective generator as inspiration. 

Once you have defined your learning objectives, you can think about teaching and learning activities that can help your students achieve them. Use this teaching activity overview as a starting point. There are different filters you can use to tailor the activity to your needs. You can also select the level of Bloom from your objective to find an activity on the same level. 

Before designing your own materials, it is also useful to consult open educational resources. These are materials other lecturers or didactic staff have created and made available to use in higher education. You can access the resources through the University Library. 

If you want to support students in developing their skills in your course, you can integrate relevant modules of the Science Skills Platform into your materials. Contact skills@science.leidenuniv.nl for support. 

Once you have your learning objectives and activities, you think about which form of assessment and feedback are most suitable to provide the right kind of stimulation for students to develop their knowledge and skills and achieve the objectives. Assessment can be summative or formative.

The overview of Bloom's taxonomy in the learning objectives guidelines also includes some possible products that test whether a certain cognitive level is achieved. Lower levels can often be tested with multiple choice or closed questions, while higher levels require more advanced examination methods like papers or presentations.

Use the information about assessment and feedback, and Bloom's taxonomy as a starting point and then consult with SEEDS and your Board of Examiners about which assessment to select and how the different components should be weighted.

The practical organisation of the course or educational component is just as important as a good design. Update the Prospectus page if necessary, create a Brightspace page, create digital exams (if applicable), pay attention to scheduling, request web-lectures, etc. 

A step-by-step guide for the practical organisation will follow. Consult practical organisation for more information.

[Last update: June 2025]

Learn more about the practical organisation of education.

Once you have made your changes and run the course or educational component in its new form, it is crucial to evaluate whether your changes had the desired effect.

Plan a moment for yourself to reflect on the process and results. Schedule a meeting with SEEDS to discuss lessons learned and make new plans if necessary.

You can choose to request additional evaluation questions for your course evaluation that focus on the changes you made. Also think about interviewing some students about their impression of the changes for more detailed feedback.