At its core, UML provides a set of tools for making the structure and behavior of software systems visible. It allows developers to represent components, relationships, and interactions in ways that support both design and communication.
While UML was developed to model software systems, similar principles can be applied to instructional design.
Course mapping can be understood as a form of system modeling for learning. It provides a structured way to represent how learning objectives, activities, and assessments relate to one another within a course.
For experienced instructors, many of these relationships may already exist implicitly. However, like UML diagrams in software development, course maps make these relationships explicit.
This visibility allows for more intentional design and more effective communication among faculty and program coordinators.
From this perspective, course mapping is not simply a documentation exercise using a template. It is a way of examining the learning system itself—how its parts fit together and how they function as a whole.
While UML was developed for software systems, I think it is worth considering whether UML could be modified or extended for instructional design. Course mapping may represent an early step in that direction, suggesting that learning systems, like software systems, can be modeled in ways that support analysis, communication, and improvement.
