Comments on: Syllabus: extreme makeover

By: Daily Links 01/09/2010 « EduEyeView

Daily Links 01/09/2010 « EduEyeView — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:28:31 +0000

[...] Syllabus: extreme makeover [...]

By: Technology Policies on Course Syllabi

Technology Policies on Course Syllabi — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:44:25 +0000

[...] August of 2009, Natalie Houston wrote a ProfHacker post about making over your syllabus for a new term or a new class, and she [...]

By: Hacking it and other ideas… |

Hacking it and other ideas… | — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:17:21 +0000

[...] helpful teaching tips, classroom ideas, new technologies, and advice. I am particularly fond of Natalie Houston’s Syllabus: Extreme Makeover post and Julie Meloni’s Getting Started With Google Docs in the Classroom post. By the way, did [...]

By: William Patrick Wend

William Patrick Wend — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:56:44 +0000

I am doing my first syllabus right now and the tips posted on Prof Hacker and other websites have been very helpful. This post gave me a great idea of a policy to add (no coming in later than ___ minutes). Thanks, everyone.

By: Karen Hellekson

Karen Hellekson — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 02:14:42 +0000

I'm adjuncting after a long absence, and I got an online-only class, rather than the face-to-face class I previously taught. I borrowed a syllabus from an experienced online-teaching colleague and tweaked it. I prefer bare-minimum syllabi, so in fact there is very little to cut.

Students seem to care about what counts for what percentage; I care about the overall arc of the class and its goals, and how certain activities play into those goals; and the administration cares about certain bureaucratic things, like "if any student has a disability..." or "plagiarism is a very serious offense and will result in..." This year, interestingly, we've been asked by the higher-ups to add in wording having to do with possibly quarantining for H1N1, so ill students don't come to class and won't be penalized for that.

I think it was a great idea to pick my colleague's brain about what to expect for online classes. For example, I assumed that students who signed up for online classes were slightly computer savvy, in that perhaps they at least have their own computers, and apparently that is not the case. I had lots of grand ideas that I have thus scaled back until I can test the waters with this class. But it was great to start with a blank sheet of paper for the syllabus and rethink it from zero.

By: Natalie Houston

Natalie Houston — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:26:58 +0000

Yes, Terry, absolutely — here I was really focusing on the policy/document format side of things rather than course content/structure — I always review course evals (I use a supplemental form with questions that give me more specific feedback than our university-mandated one does) as part of reworking a particular semester’s content and sequencing.

By: Nels

Nels — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:11:42 +0000

In my department, we include looking at each other’s syllabi at department meetings, primarily for program cohesiveness. It helps when we can make explicit connections between what we are doing in class and what they did or will do in other classes in our program.

By: Terry Brock

Terry Brock — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:56:37 +0000

It might also be helpful to actually take the time to read some of your student feedback from the previous years, to see what parts of the course you students did and did not like. Although a lot of them may just race through those things, some (I know I always did/do), really take the time to provide constructive feedback.

Also, having other professors look over your syllabus could be helpful for everybody...and maybe a way to (subtly) encourage your colleagues to take a look at their old syllabi.

By: Nels

Nels — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:30:23 +0000

I did this in 2005 after reading a lot and studying other people's syllabi (I'd just started my administrative positions and was starting to red a lot of syllabi). For me, I realized that it's important for a syllabus to reflect the personality of the professor and that there are fifty million ways to do that. Once I got that down, I started having a lot of fun working on syllabi. Since it's been four years since I did this, it might be time to do it again, but I just like what I have so damn much, and students and colleagues actually comment on it. When I went up for tenure, some committee members commented on my syllabi design and took parts. I think the work that goes into a serious redesign can reap many unexpected benefits.

(Oh, George, I don't use the universal Gravatar anymore because I don't like having the exact same image of me in diverse places. It's why there's a different pic of me on Fickr, MySpace, various blogs, Twitter/Facebook.)