The Course Pack Is Designed To Be The Primary Source Of Course Materials

 Custom course packs give university instructors enormous freedom in course design. Unlike traditional textbooks, course packs can take any shape, and can be tailored to fit almost any subject matter, teaching method, or educational goal. These qualities, combined with their reasonable cost, make course packs very popular among university instructors. Cost aside, however, many university students see course packs in a very different light. To students, many course packs are an intimidating maze of texts that are highly confusing and difficult to navigate. If the course pack is a collection of undifferentiated articles or discrete book chapters without organizational signposts, clear reading guidelines or chapter headings, students must struggle to build the contexts necessary for comprehension.


Carefully constructed, course packs can perform several different functions, depending on the instructor's goals. Here are three basic types of course packs, along with brief descriptions of how they might fit with course goals.


In disciplines where research produces new information at a rapid rate, as in the health fields or the natural sciences, it may not be possible to cover in one semester as much as the fast-changing subject seems to demand. In these situations, particularly in graduate level courses, the instructor often needs to ask students to buy a collection of materials taken from the latest published research. Instructors generally treat this type of course pack as a research tool to which students refer as needed, perhaps even after the course has ended.


If you plan to use a course pack as a reference, you should carefully weigh the utility of the contents to students in six months or a year, especially relative to its cost. It might be more appropriate to use the reference pack as a tool to teach students how to read and evaluate similar material and how to find more current materials on their own. It may also be better to use portions of articles rather than articles in their entirety. Not only does this reduce the volume of material and clarify your purpose in providing the materials to students, copying small sections of articles may not require copyright clearance or payment of royalties.


A professor in a research design and applied statistics course divides the course pack into sections. She presents problem statements and hypotheses from several studies in one section of the course pack, several different designs for different research problems (and for similar research problems) in another section, and study results and conclusions in other sections of the pack. Thereby, students see the application of design and methodology theory, learn to critique current research in the field, and master the forms and protocols of research writing. This kind of course pack is more valuable to students when they undertake research outside the classroom.


Another good use of the reference pack is to provide diverse materials for different learning groups or "tracks" that students in the course may choose to pursue. In a Health Policy Law course, students may choose to study case law applicable to regulatory agencies, hospital liability, nursing home administration, patient rights, etc. The course pack contains case law from each of these areas, and students use different sections of the pack to complete course assignments. Since students in the course have materials from all of the topical areas, they may refer to other topics later as their interest or needs change.


An Anthropology professor has developed six issue-oriented field projects as a central component of his course. The six projects together represent a discrete set of cultural features of the region studied. In the course pack, each of these six field projects is described in depth, including an overview of the topic and its related themes and issues in a regional context; a descriptive project goal including strategies and ideas to guide the field work; expectations and suggestions for reporting; and an annotated bibliography. While each student pursues only one field project during the semester, the course pack provides extensive information and resources on all six topic areas, allowing students to read about the issues and strategies involved investigating all six cultural features of the region.


In subjects where textbooks do not offer adequate coverage of topics, the course pack can supplement the central text. The most limited form is simply an anthology of articles, individual chapters from other texts, stories or relevant documents. This kind of course pack can also provide an opportunity for students to read rare materials not available in commercial publications.





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