In Teaching Standardized Courses: Advantages and Disadvantages on FacultyFocus.com, Mary Bart outlines several plusses and minuses associated with using pre-made course content.
Advantages include:
- Less preparation time is necessary, allowing the instructor to focus on teaching the course rather than spending so much time preparing the material.
- Instructors can have the option of teaching a wide variety of courses because the material is predesigned.
- The course may have a more professional feel if it includes specially-designed multimedia components.
Disadvantages include:
- The instructor might disagree with some of the course content.
- The instructor may feel less interested or invested in the content because it was created by someone else, and because it stays the same from semester to semester.
- The teaching strategies used in the course might not necessarily match the instructors teaching style.
What do you think? Is it better for instructors to use pre-made content, or to create their own content?