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Course Outline

Learn the flow and structure of a course outline, which you help you build out your course during course design.

Amy Peterson avatar
Written by Amy Peterson
Updated over a year ago

The course outline describes the flow of the course on a lesson by lesson basis. For this step of course design, you need to provide the title of each chapter, the title of each lesson, and a brief description of each lesson's contents by including a learning objective and a short list of the functions that the lesson will cover. Each of the functions covered in a lesson should help achieve the learning objective. When writing your course outline remember that a course has four chapters and each chapter has 3-4 lessons. Chapter 1 is limited to 3 lessons. Review the example below to get an idea of a good course outline with a clear course flow. Please keep in mind we have a 550-word maximum for Scripts. All Audition material is included in this 550-word limit.
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​Policy on Plagiarism
Plagiarism of any kind is not tolerated by DataCamp and will result in the forfeiture of the audition process. Any content produced during the audition through any means other than your own original thought process should not be presented as your own.

Example

From our Intermediate SQL course:
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Chapter 1: Selecting Data

Lesson 1.1: Querying a database

  • Learner will be able to select a count of records (COUNT(*)) or a count of field values (COUNT(field_name)) and differentiate between these results

  • Learner will be able to select a count of distinct records by field

  • Keywords used: COUNT (keywords from SQL Foundations such as SELECT, FROM, DISTINCT, AS, and * will also be used)

Lesson 1.2: Query execution

  • Learner will be able to describe the basic order that SQL code is executed (for example, FROM > SELECT > LIMIT)

  • Learner will be able to troubleshoot and debug SQL errors shown in the editor indicating missing commas or keywords and spelling mistakes

  • Keywords and new syntax: LIMIT, error handling

Lesson 1.3: SQL style

  • Learner will be able to edit messy SQL code to conform with basic SQL indentation and capitalization guidelines following Holywell's style guide

  • Learner will be able to select data from a table field with non-standard naming (spaces in the field name)

  • New syntax: non-standard field selection syntax; the exercises at the end of this lesson will also ask learners to update messy code in the editor to reinforce style concepts

Chapter 2: Filtering Records

Lesson 2.1: Filtering numbers

  • Learner will be able to filter both numerical and string values using the WHERE keyword and = and <> comparison operators

  • Learner will be able to filter numerical values using the comparison operators <, >, <=, >=

  • Keywords introduced: WHERE, the comparison operators listed above

Lesson 2.2: Multiple criteria

  • Learner will be able to filter data based on whether it meets at least one criterion using OR

  • Learner will be able to filter data based on whether it meets all required criteria using AND

  • Learner will be able to filter numerical values based on whether they fall BETWEEN two values

  • Keywords introduced: AND, OR, BETWEEN

Lesson 2.3: Filtering text

  • Learner will be able to filter data based on whether or not it is LIKE (or NOT LIKE) a criterion using the % and _ wildcards

  • Learner will be able to filter data based on whether it is included in a list of provided values using IN

  • Keywords introduced: LIKE, NOT LIKE % wildcard, _ wildcard, IN

Lesson 2.4: Null values

  • Learner will be able to identify and select or exclude missing values using IS NULL and IS NOT NULL

  • Definitions: null

  • Keywords introduced: IS NULL, IS NOT NULL

Chapter 3: Aggregate Functions

Lesson 3.1: Summarizing data

  • Learner will be able to summarize results by finding the average, minimum, maximum, or sum

  • Learner will understand which aggregate functions can be used with non-numerical data

  • Keywords introduced: AVG, MIN, MAX, SUM

Lesson 3.2: Summarizing subsets

  • Learner will be able to summarize filtered data by combining AVG, MIN, MAX, or SUM with WHERE

  • Learner will be able to round query results to the desired number of decimal places using ROUND

  • Keywords introduced: ROUND

Lesson 3.3: Aliasing and arithmetic

  • Learner will understand that aliases defined in the SELECT statement often cannot be referenced later in the query because of the order that SQL code is evaluated

  • Learner will be able to do basic calculations inside queries using +, -, *, and /

  • Lerner will understand the difference between aggregate functions and arithmetic

  • Keywords introduced: the arithmetic operators above

Chapter 4: Sorting and Grouping

Lesson 4.1: Sorting results

  • Learner will be able to order results by a selected field in either ascending or descending order

  • Learner will be able to order results by multiple fields

  • Keywords introduced: ORDER BY,DESC

Lesson 4.2: Grouping data

  • Learner will be able to group data based on values in a given field

  • Learner will be able to group results by multiple fields

  • Keywords introduced: GROUP BY

Lesson 4.3: Filtering grouped data

  • Learner will be able to filter grouped data using HAVING

  • Learner will be able to differentiate between situations where it is appropriate to use WHERE vs. those where it is appropriate to use HAVING

  • Keywords introduced: HAVING

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