Build a Syllabus for Learning January 20, 2005 Presenter : Tine Reimers, Director, Center for Effective Teaching and Learning

The Box is your course: What’s the value added to students? Course Curriculum Students IN Students OUT How have they changed? Faculty Inputs:instruction, mentoring, advising, resources, etc. (Student inputs)

Key Question How do you want students to be different at the end of your course than at the beginning? (The learning-centered syllabus should answer this question!)

Course Design for Significant Learning  Consideration of Situational Factors  Backward Design  Integration/alignment of Key Components  Integration of Higher Level Learning goals

Example: A Freshman Seminar Situational factors:  Small course—25-30  Required curriculum aims = Critical Thinking and skills preparation for success in college  All freshmen—straight out of high school or out of school for many years  “Naïve” readers

Faculty’s “ten year hence” goals (Backward Design, Higher Learning) I want my “students-citizens” to:  be able to pick up a news article or a short story or an essay and see how it is written from a particular perspective  be critical readers of any text

Some Course Goals (Backward Design, Higher learning) I want my students to:  read a text closely  have confidence in their personal understanding of texts  be able to identify perspective  use evidence to argue a point of view

For the assignment… (alignment with goals) Students have to  Identify two texts  Reread the texts several times  Digest them for themselves  Identify the different perspectives in the texts  look for evidence to support their ideas  Find an adequate definition or thesis to account for the different way the perspectives work  Write a coherent argument that analyzes the two perspectives

Steps to help students through this (aligned course structure)  Close readings as a class, with in-class discussion  Regular quizzes that test close understanding of texts  First paper is a close reading of just one story or essay  Second paper more complex by having them compare two new texts  Third paper is a comparison of three texts—they have to add a text to paper #2.  Fourth paper = new topic  Portfolio approach with midterm and final reflection papers

Steps to help them through this (support for assignment )  Each paper ed to faculty member in rough form and reviewed by  Paper rewritten  Peer review of papers with written feedback from 3 peers  Paper rewritten in final form

 Relate your assignments to your course goals (does the assignment format lead students to do the kinds of activities that you list in your course goals?)  Relate your assignments to your 10 year hence goals (are they relevant to the most important things you want students to learn?)

Course Design Template  Identify “situational factors” of the course  (material, curriculum, students)  Build backward  What are long and short term goals?  What will indicate success? (evaluated assignments)  What teaching and learning activities? (experiences designed to induce change)  Integrate  All elements of a well-designed course point to long and short-term goals  **Integration requires hard choices with regard to material and curriculum!!**

A Syllabus for Effectively Designed Course…  Communicates course goals in terms of what the students will do  Describes assignments that are in line with the course goals  Communicates the students’ and the teachers’ role and responsibilities within the course  Establishes what the pattern of communication will be in the course  Gives a semester calendar that shows course logistics, due dates, readings etc.