How to learn something on your own/design your own "college course" for self study.
This stuff could probably be used to design a course for other people if you already know the material, but the focus of this discussion is about how to create a college-ish course for yourself that you then take, without the benefit of an expert instructor designing and teaching it.
Not just about designing the course (structure, material, assignments, deadlines), but also how to study it (motivation, community, curiosity, adaptive difficulty/formality).
People tend to overestimate their capacity and underestimate the time and effort required to complete course objectives. Rule of thumb: try to estimate it accurately, and then divide in half. It's easier to add more things to a course than remove them.
Having an expert or advisor who can evaluate your plans (and your assignments) is valuable. Do you have a Mentor Network yet?
Design the course
Pick a topic you're interested in studying
Hopefully you don't need help with this part. If you do, you can scroll through lists of MOOCs or university classes to see what jumps out at you. Picking your topic defines how wide vs deep your course is going to be. If you pick "library science" that will be very broad and shallow. If you pick "implementation of boolean operators in web-based public library catalogs" it will be very narrow and deep.
Decide how many "credit hours" the course will be, or how much total time it's expected to take
If you're doing this as a reading course at a university, that will be decided for you. But this is basically a way to limit the scope of what you're going to plan out so you don't go overboard.
Identify learning objectives and core competencies
MOOCs and syllabi for existing courses are good places to start.
Organizing goals by "regions"
Fink vs Bloom taxonomies for goal "regions": https://intentionalcollegeteaching.org/finks-taxonomy-of-significant-learning/ https://www.simplypsychology.org/blooms-taxonomy.html
Fink:
- Learning how to learn (practice useful study skills and strategies)
- Caring (instill passion for the subject, want to learn more, consider it important, values and ethics)
- Human dimension (how does this fit into my life, how do I feel about it, how can I better understand others in light of it, how to work together)
- Foundational knowledge (key concepts, terms, relationships, facts)
- Application skills (how to do it)
- Integration (relationships between concepts)
Bloom:
- Remembering (memorize, define)
- Understanding (classify, explain, translate, discuss)
- Applying (execute, implement, solve, interpret, operate)
- Analyzing (differentiate, experiment, question, contrast, relate, test)
- Evaluating (appraise, argue, support, value, critique)
- Creating (design, assemble, formulate, author, investigate)
Characteristics of a good goal
- Focused on students and describe what students will know and be able to do
- Are actionable, visible, and measurable
- Clear and understandable to students as well as instructors
- Neither too specific nor too generic
- Often focused on high levels of thinking and learning
- Appropriate for the course level and/or students' background
- Conducive to authentic and motivating tasks
- Examine other disciplines to see if there are things you can pull in for a broader perspective
Identify evaluations/assignments
Evaluations and assignments are intended to:
- to determine if objectives and competencies are met
- to provide feedback to the learner
- utilize Goodhart's law in a positive way
- connect with your "why", achieve part of your goal
- get feedback from experts if possible
- identify intermediate evaluations to allow early feedback and correction
- include reflection on the learning experience and integration into the broader goals of the individual
Be thinking about who does the evaluation and/or provides the feedback.
MOOCs and syllabi for existing courses are good places to start looking for ideas.
Assignment ideas:
- Essays
- Precís and book reviews/reports
- Presentations
- Workshops
- Zines
- Games
- Code prototypes
- Audio recordings
- Video explanations
- Graphs and diagrams
- Illustrations and drawings
- A practice metadata file
- Group discussions and collaborative annotation
- LibGuides and pathfinders
- Analysis of a real world scenario
- Recommendations for a real world scenario
- Trend analysis of a field
- Cross-field application
- Annotated bibliography
- Practice reference question email responses
- Research plans
- Conduct a peer review
- Interview an expert
- Discussion with paper author
- Ethics assessment
- Literature review
- Craft project
- Map
- Research proposal
- Research project or experiment or survey
- Lightening talk
- Moodle course
- Lead a discussion or teach a session
- E-portfolio
- Community consultation
- Autoethnography
- Data management plan
- Quiz, practice problems
- Blog post
- Something that will look good on your resume
- Something interactive where you can learn in real time from participants
- Other practical applications of course material
These aren't just ways to evaluate your learning, they're opportunities to apply what you've learned with an output that matters to you. If you want to be published in a journal, put a research paper in your assignment list. If you want to showcase development of learning aids or experience teaching workshops, do those things.
Identify knowledge and learning opportunities and modalities to produce the objectives and competencies
- Read-write-talk: Sequence of reading, reflective writing, and discussion with advising faculty member.
- Do/look-read-talk: Start with some field or lab work, followed by readings and discussion with advising faculty member – write-ups of experiential work can be included.
- Read-talk-do: Do assigned readings, followed by discussion with advising faculty member, and then application based projects.
- Know-do-do: Work through a series of stages – build some background knowledge of skills, work on smaller application projects, conclude with larger, more complex project.
- Talk-read-write: Start with some intensive meetings with the advising faculty member to discuss material, read recommended resources, and prepare written work.
Identify teaching methods, texts, tools, and other materials to support delivery of the knowledge
Where to find them:
- MOOCs and syllabi for existing courses are good places to start
- Literature reviews are useful too, including citation chaining and influential authors
- A primary textbook (ideally with practice questions)
- The suggested readings and references in the primary textbook
- Journal articles
- Youtube lecture series
- OpenCourseWare resources/OER
- Sometimes the original authors have given presentations on their work
Evaluation considerations:
- Match the level and background of students
- Relevant to the topic
- Fundamental to the field
- Currency
- Comprehensiveness
- Accuracy
- Availability
- Contrasting work, different points of view
- Consider less formal sources, like pop-psych books
- Read reviews!
- Underrepresented voices
- Non-traditional publishing
Write a syllabus
Keep in mind while designing:
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Arrange topics in a logical progression
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Examine other disciplines to see if there are things you can pull in for a broader perspective
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Consider moving some subtopics to a secondary course
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Flexible and varied teaching strategies and modalities
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Ethics and values
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Multicultural perspective
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Active learning
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Community-engaged learning
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Universal Design for Learning
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https://parknotes.substack.com/p/how-to-create-your-own-university
Execute the course
Pick a destination: mastery, broad familiarity, "well read", deep understanding of certain subtopics? Self-learning isn't a university or a prison. No one is forcing you to cover certain topics at certain depths in a certain order. Feel free to pursue your curiosity and passion.
Motivation
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Identify your "why", why do you want to learn this
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Write down the goal of the course, and your desired end result/how do you know when you've gotten there
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Then there's "the dip" The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) Seth Godin 2007. Having a "why" to fall back on can get you through the dip.
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Connect with other learners interested in same topic
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forum
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coffee and learn
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mooc participants
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online learning communities become study groups
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discord servers
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hypothes.is groups become lecture debate, Collaborative Annotation
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book clubs
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Gathering people together
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Knowledge hydrant: https://www.industriallogic.com/papers/khdraft.pdf
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Set "challenges" for yourself, eg write 500 stream of consciousness words on the last chapter you read
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Use notes collected during learning to write your own textbook/create an OER
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Set deadlines for assignments
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Block out "class time" on your calendar
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Look to less formal sources when motivation is lagging, a topic is too difficult or advanced, or just to get a different point of view to revive your curiosity
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Revisit your "why" often
Acquire
Read, watch, listen to, or otherwise absorb material.
Review
Take notes, do Free recall, Expand notes, Awkward selfies, Spaced repetition, etc
Apply and create
Do the course assignments, and share your work. Creating an output from your efforts is a crucial piece for internalizing knowledge. Application is how you level-up learning.
When, where, how?
Consider Hacking scheduling with psychology. If you're having trouble getting started, check out Task Initiation.
When do you want to be done by? How do you know how long it'll take?
- When will you study? Be specific and consistent.
- Where will you study? Craft an environment that produces focus Study lamp
- How long will you study? Be realistic.
Celebrate victories
- Host a “graduation lunch” — invite a friend or two to hear about what you’ve learned. Meet up for burgers and share your milestone.
- Create a mini certificate — design a playful award for yourself and hang it where you’ll see it.
- Share a progress post — write a short update in a journal, blog, or even a quick text to a friend.
- Plan a themed night — watch a movie, cook a meal, or listen to music connected to what you just finished.
- Treat yourself — buy fresh flowers, a new book, or enjoy a favorite dessert.
- Take a reflection walk — head outside and think through what you gained from the experience. (bonus: journaling your thoughts after)
- Mark your progress visually — add a sticker, doodle, or note on a calendar or in your planner.
https://www.embracinghome.blog/index.php/2025/09/02/how-to-design-your-own-personal-curriculum/
Reflect
How did going through the course impact your understanding of the topic? What did you learn about how you learn? What would you (or did you) change about the course if you were going to take it again for the first time? How can you apply these lessons to future learning opportunities? You can do this meta-reflection at multiple points throughout the course.
TODO unsorted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zmek5g3Xxk has suggestions for
- how to set learning goals
- identify key skills
- evaluate learning resources
- time management
- feedback
- no deadlines cause how do you know long it'll take to learn/instead ask what's the next thing about this topic I need to learn
- revise your plan when things go wrong
- everything is up for revision, including goals/why and syllabus
- should be based on progress made up to that point (because you're more informed now than you were at the start)
- Should ask "what's the next thing I need to learn about this topic" or "what's the next thing I need to do to improve my skill" (sometimes this will be a dead end, which is why...)
- Should reevaluate regularly, not just at the end of the course, so dead ends can be recognized and course-corrected sooner
Digital learning stuff:
- Hypothes.is: mark up websites with others, Collaborative Annotation
- Books can hang out in Calibre or served with kavita or komga
- Moodle for designing and serving asynchronous courses (solo learning experience)
- OER hosting: https://www.instructure.com/canvas (no docker?) and https://www.sakailms.org/sakai-lms-features (no docker?) and openedx and Chamilo
- BigBlueButton+Greenlight for synchronous online classrooms (polls, engagement analytics)
- Anki for spaced repetition of facts (and maybe other things?)
My questions:
- Is this motivation stuff going to work with my AuDHD? Examine my own experiences, and see who else has tried to answer that question
- How do I evaluate learning sources for a topic I don't know anything about? Collection development process and Information Literacy skills.
- What is a learning contract? What are student-led individually created courses (sliccs)? https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/catalogs/tip-sheets/independent-studies-involving-students-course-design
Pages that link here:
Broken links on this page:
- ↛ Mentor Network
- ↛ Information Literacy