Mark Potter Center for Faculty Development
Faculty participants will: Review their syllabi from different perspectives. Evaluate what they want to accomplish with their syllabi. Assess which changes they can adopt to improve their syllabi. Begin developing those changes.
What is your reaction to the article “Death to the Syllabus”? Is anyone willing to go so far as to adopt Mano Singham’s approach? What considerations arise when we think of the syllabus as a “contract”?
Read short passage from Ken Bain Does Bain’s vision of the syllabus provide us with an antidote to the “controlling” syllabus?
What do we want our syllabi to accomplish? Our answers to this question Are a matter of personal preference and comfort Should reflect our values
What do we want our syllabi to include? Our answers to this question should reflect Our answers to the previous question Our thoughts and ideas about The learning process The subject matter TGI (Teaching Goals Inventory)
Teaching philosophy statement 7 principles of good practice “Rules of the road” Purpose of the course Course description
Course objectives May be written at a course or unit level Can be of two types Concrete statements of what students will be able to do as a result of learning Open-ended, flexible, descriptions of a situation or problem out of which learning will arise Readings Course calendar Course requirements (e.g. participation, completing reading assignments, etc.)
Policies and expectations Attendance, late papers, missed tests, civility, etc. Academic integrity Disability, access, and safety Evaluation and grading procedures/criteria
Angelo, T.A. and Cross, K.P. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass. Bain, K. (2004). What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Grunert O’Brien, J., Millis, B.J., and Cohen, M.W. (2008). The Course Syllabus. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Singham, M. (2007). “Death to the syllabus!” Liberal Education, 93, 52-56