1. Mark Potter Center for Faculty Development mpotte10@mscd.edu

2.  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.

3.  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”?

4.  Read short passage from Ken Bain  Does Bain’s vision of the syllabus provide us with an antidote to the “controlling” syllabus?

5.  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

6.  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)

7.  Teaching philosophy statement  7 principles of good practice  “Rules of the road”  Purpose of the course  Course description

8.  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.)

9.  Policies and expectations  Attendance, late papers, missed tests, civility, etc.  Academic integrity  Disability, access, and safety  Evaluation and grading procedures/criteria

10.  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