This study aims to develop a new approach in designing a course for the improvement of college teaching. For this purpose,‘causal chain analysis’created in cognitive anthropology was redeveloped to be used for the analysis of teaching. In order to create a new approach in designing a course, this redeveloped causal chain analysis was linked to the Fink(2003)'s 12 phases of designing college courses. An action research was conducted for the development of training material of this new approach. After producing initial materials, the researcher organized a teaching circle with ten other professors in the same university and conducted ten workshops for teachers, professors, researchers, and graduate students. During the workshop, participant observation, informal interviews and brief questionnaire surveys were conducted to get feedback from the participants. Based on the feedback, new cases to apply these methods were developed and the training material was improved. The researcher applied causal chain analysis and the process of designing courses for the improvement of her own courses, and developed the processes of the self-improvement of teaching. The paper introduces the concept of causal chain analysis and matters to be attended to during the process of the analysis. Diverse examples of using the analysis to solve problems or to improve teaching were discussed to show how enormous the potential of the causal chain analysis is. The procedure of designing college courses is introduced together with the use of case of actual course development.