Tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education.

Tag Archives: syllabus design

Rid Your Syllabi of the Passive Voice

January 11, 2010 in Pedagogy by Nels P. Highberg

Passive voice often brings with it an air of formality, which is why it often appears in our syllabi. This post argues that we should get rid of it and claim responsibility not just for ourselves but for our students.

Shifting The Days of Your Syllabus

January 8, 2010 in Pedagogy by Brian Croxall

At the beginning of the Fall semester, ProfHacker authors provided a number of tips for how to quickly improve syllabi. Today, we explore the difficulties of shifting a syllabus from one schedule of teaching days to another.

Syllabus: extreme makeover

August 21, 2009 in Pedagogy by Natalie Houston
If you are creating your very first syllabus, there are a number of online resources and tutorials that will guide you through the process, whether it’s creating the actual syllabus document or designing a course from scratch. But if you’ve been teaching for a while, it’s more likely that rather than start from scratch, you’ll be [...]

The Catch-Up Day

August 18, 2009 in Pedagogy by Natalie Houston

The best syllabus hack I know is really, really simple, but sometimes hard to commit to. In the schedule of readings/topics, clear at least one day of all readings, assignments, discussions, etc., and label it a “catch-up day.”

Put learning goals into your syllabus

August 10, 2009 in Pedagogy by Jason B. Jones
David Silver launched a series last week on how to write a syllabus (part 1, part 2) that promises to be very helpful.  The third installment, on writing learning goals into a syllabus, underlines the importance of this oft-neglected step: on the first day of classes, learning goals signal to students what they can and should [...]