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Log: Course Description Generation

Date: 2026-03-29 Start Time: ~5:00 PM CDT Model: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) Task: Generate a comprehensive course description for the Ecology interactive intelligent textbook

Prompt 1: Initial Course Description

User prompt:

Please create a detailed course description for this interactive intelligent textbook about Ecology. The audience is high school students. I want you to include all the topics that are covered under the US AP Ecology recommendations by the college board, but make it clear in the course description that this course is not affiliated with the College Board in any way and is not endorsed by the College board. I also want you to put a special focus on System Thinking and Critical Thinking skills. Add content that will help student become better at spotting misinformation in social media and the press.

Analysis

  1. Identified the correct College Board program: The College Board does not offer a standalone "AP Ecology" course. The relevant program is AP Environmental Science (APES), which covers ecology as a major component alongside Earth systems, energy, pollution, and global change.

  2. Researched AP Environmental Science framework: Used a subagent to compile the complete APES topic list across all 9 units (~95 topics) and 4 Big Ideas from the College Board's course and exam description.

  3. Key design decisions:

    • Structured Units 1-9 to align with the 9 APES units, preserving all required topics
    • Added Unit 10: Systems Thinking and Ecological Reasoning as a dedicated systems thinking unit covering stock-and-flow diagrams, causal loop diagrams, feedback loops, leverage points, emergence, resilience, regime shifts, scale, and mental models
    • Added Unit 11: Evaluating Environmental Claims as a dedicated misinformation/critical thinking unit covering scientific method, logical fallacies, source evaluation, statistical literacy, media literacy, case studies in environmental misinformation, and constructive skepticism
    • Added "Systems Thinking Focus" and "Critical Thinking Focus" callouts within each content unit to integrate these skills throughout the course rather than isolating them
    • Included a prominent disclaimer box (using MkDocs Material admonition syntax) stating the course is not affiliated with or endorsed by the College Board
    • Set reading level at Grade 10 (Flesch-Kincaid) for the high school audience

  4. Additional sections included:

    • Learning Objectives (8 high-level objectives)
    • Bloom's Taxonomy integration table
    • Assessment strategy
    • Topics summary table
    • Big Ideas (4 overarching themes from APES)
    • Science Practices (7 practices from APES framework)
    • Pedagogical approach describing MicroSims, learning graphs, glossary, and quizzes
    • Course duration estimate

Output

Created docs/course-description.md and added it to the mkdocs.yml navigation.

Prompt 2: Bloom's Taxonomy Learning Objectives

User prompt:

Add an additional section at the end of the course-description.md file that list the Learning Objectives with a single level 2 section for each of the 2001 Bloom Taxonomy levels

Analysis

  1. Identified the correct taxonomy version: The 2001 revised Bloom's Taxonomy by Anderson and Krathwohl, which uses verb-based level names:

    • Remember (formerly Knowledge)
    • Understand (formerly Comprehension)
    • Apply (formerly Application)
    • Analyze (formerly Analysis)
    • Evaluate (formerly Evaluation)
    • Create (formerly Synthesis -- moved to the top)

  2. Design decisions:

    • Created 10 specific, measurable learning objectives per level (60 total)
    • Each objective uses an action verb appropriate to its taxonomy level
    • Objectives are drawn from actual course content across all 11 units
    • Lower levels (Remember, Understand) focus on foundational ecological knowledge
    • Middle levels (Apply, Analyze) emphasize quantitative skills, data interpretation, and systems analysis
    • Higher levels (Evaluate, Create) integrate the critical thinking and misinformation detection themes
    • Used level 3 headings (###) for each Bloom's level under a single level 2 heading (##) as requested

Output

Appended the "Learning Objectives by Bloom's Taxonomy Level" section to the end of docs/course-description.md with 60 learning objectives across 6 levels.

Files Created or Modified

File Action Description
docs/course-description.md Created, then updated Full course description with 11 units and 60 Bloom's Taxonomy learning objectives
mkdocs.yml Modified Added "Course Description" to site navigation

Timeline

Step Elapsed Time (approx.) Description
Prompt 1 start 0:00 User submits initial course description request
Subagent research 0:00 - 4:00 AP Environmental Science topic research via web search
Course description written 4:00 - 5:30 Generated and wrote course-description.md, updated mkdocs.yml
Prompt 2 start ~6:00 User requests Bloom's Taxonomy learning objectives
Bloom's objectives written 6:00 - 7:30 Appended 60 learning objectives to course description
Prompt 3 start ~8:00 User requests log file creation
Log file written 8:00 - 9:00 Created this log file
Total session time ~10 minutes

Token and Resource Usage

Component Input Tokens (approx.) Output Tokens (approx.)
Subagent: APES topic research 15,000 24,000
Prompt 1: Course description generation 30,000 8,000
Prompt 2: Bloom's Taxonomy objectives 35,000 4,500
Prompt 3: Log file creation 40,000 3,000
Estimated total ~120,000 ~39,500
  • Subagent used 23 tool calls (web searches and page fetches) consuming ~38,700 tokens
  • Total course description output: approximately 270 lines of markdown
  • Covers all ~95 APES topics plus additional systems thinking and misinformation literacy content