Teaching is rarely evaluated by professional peers. And those who engage in innovative acts of teaching rarely build upon the work of others as they would in their more conventional scholarly work. When we portray those ways in which teaching can become scholarship through course portfolios, therefore, we seek approaches that render teaching public, critically evaluated, and useable by others in the community. I would argue that teaching, like other forms of scholarship, is an extended process that unfolds over time. Teaching begins with a vision of the possible or an experience of the problematic.
Vision leads to planning, the careful design of an instructional program or activity.
A course design is much like the proposal for a program of research. The design can take the form of a course syllabus, a course outline, or even an argument for the development of a course. Usually, the design will eventually take the form of a detailed sequence of teacher and student activities, including topics, readings, projects, assessments, exhibitions, competitions, or demonstrations. Design might also include the creation of course materials, such as slides, demonstrations, simulations, websites, laboratories, internships, and the like. Once designed, teaching must be enacted.