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July 26, 2010, 03:00 PM ET
From the Archives: On Syllabi and Course Design
It's the end of July. This means that you have already finished all of your course plans and syllabi for the upcoming semester, completed your course websites or CMS modules, written your assignments, quizzes, and exams, reserved materials at the library, and photocopied all your handouts, right?
I jest, I jest.
Never fear, ProfHacker is here with an extra-large dose of goodness from the archives to help you approach the beginning of the year with creativity and calm. The day before the semester starts is not the day to suddenly think "hey, wouldn't it be cool if I completely overhauled my standard intro class and add a wiki, student blogs, and pecha kucha presentations?" Well, of course you can think that if you like, but actingon it might be difficult at the last minute.
Keep in mind, the first rule of productivity is "don't fix what's already working." If you're satisfied with the assignments, policies, and course plans you've used before, then there's no need to do a big remodel. But if there's something that you'd like to do differently, then the following posts should offer some ideas for thinking through the pedagogical implications as well as some practical how-to advice.
Selecting Course Materials
At most institutions, you will have already been required to order your textbooks for the fall semester. (If you're still on the bookstore's list of delinquents, quit reading ProfHacker and go order the books already. It doesn't help your students if the shelves are empty when they go to buy books.) Amy recently wrote about deciding to modify her reliance on published texts in favor of other kinds of materials, and many faculty choose to supplement textbooks with handouts, coursepacks, websites, or other materials. Julie's post Using Creative Commons Material in Your Classroom discusses how licenses for online content might affect your use of it. Her Talking About Fair Use in the Classroom covers some key issues surrounding educational use and copyright. Erin's Kindling the Classroom? raises some important points to consider if you teach texts that some students may choose to read on a Kindle or other e-reader.
Planning Course Sessions
Jason usefully asks What is a Lecture For, Anyway? and Ethan's series of posts on presentation technologies, including Prezi and Bee Docs Timeline, offer some alternatives to PowerPoint. Julie's Tools for Synchronous and Asynchronous Classroom Discussion opens up some possibilities beyond in-class discussion. Brian offers some ideas about How to Grade Students' Class Participation and guest author Derek Bruff offers his method for Getting Students to do the Reading using pre-class quizzes.
Creating Course Assignments
Now is the time to think about how you're going to be evaluating your students' learning, both in terms of the kinds of assignments and the technology you might use to collect and grade them. Heather explains about Digitizing the Lab Submission Processto avoid piles of paper and I wrote about Paperless Grading with GradeMark. Jason explains why he gives multiple-choice quizzes in his CMS and guest author Derek Bruff writes about Multiple Choice Questions on Exams. Three posts about student research projects contain lots of valuable ideas: Jeffrey explains about using Student Contracts for Digital Projects; guest author Derek Bruff discusses Motivating Students with Application Projects and Poster Sessions; and guest author Amy Earhart comments onUsing NINES Collex in the Classroom.
Not surprisingly, a number of posts take up questions about how and why to integrate the use of technology into teaching and learning. Amy offers strategies for Encouraging Students' Digital Problem-Solving Skills. Julie explains why she sees value in teaching humanities students how to code. Guest author Jentery Sayers takes up Integrating Digital Audio Composition into Humanities Courses. Jason explains why he has students do presentations in the Pecha Kucha format.
Julie offers valuable introductory advice in Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom and she and Jeffrey collaborated on How are you going to grade this? Evaluating Classroom Blogs. Amy wrote about Tools for Managing Multiple Course Blogs and using WordPress Multi-User to manage them. Brian offeredReflections on Teaching with Social Media and Jason cautioned about The Creepy Treehouse Problem.
Setting Course Policies
As you plan your courses, it's a good idea to set aside some time to review any department, college, or university policies that might affect your teaching this year, such as policies covering the archiving of student exams and assignments, FERPA, emergency preparedness procedures, disability accomodations, medical withdrawals, religious accomodations, and so forth.
As you consider those course policies that you set individually, you may find some of the following helpful: Nels's Developing Policies for Late Assignments; Jason's Five Tips for Dealing with Gadgets in the Classroom; Jason's Living With Your Own Absence Policy; Ethan's Developing an Electronic Communications Policy; Billie'sTechnology Policies on Course Syllabi; Brian's Digital Office Hours and George's Five Suggestions Concerning Disability, Accomodation, and the College Classroom.
Writing the Syllabus
After working through these aspects of course design and planning, it's time to actually create your syllabi. I discuss doing an extreme makeover of an existing syllabus (and include some links to resources for creating a brand-new one) and recommend scheduling a Catch-Up Day. Jason recommends that you Put Learning Goals Into Your Syllabus. Brian discusses Shifting The Days of Your Syllabus. The wording of your syllabus is important too: Nels recommends that you Rid Your Syllabi of the Passive Voice and Heather discusses Choosing the Right 'Person' in Classroom Communication. If you just want to make some quick changes, the ProfHacker team offered 11 Fast Syllabus Hacks.
Have any particular questions as you get ready for the new year? Let us know in the comments and look for more ProfHacker posts on preparing for the start of the semester over the next few weeks.
July 29, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Organizing Your Teaching Materials
A few weeks ago, a reader asked for some tips about a problem familiar to many instructors and faculty:
I'm only 2 years into 4-4 teaching and I'm drowning in course-related papers: binders of course materials, files, leftover student tests and final papers never picked up. I'm not sure what to save, and for how long, but I'm having nightmares of accumulating this much after 10 or 15 years. There wouldn't be enough room in my office for anything else. I know, I know, everything can go paperless...yet I can't seem to bring myself to throw out the paper entirely...
This reader's feeling of being overwhelmed by the ever-increasing amount of course-related documents is not unusual. Even if your students submit their work in digitalformat and you grade and return it the same way, you still need to make decisions about how you're going to organize and archive those files.
What do you need to save?
First of all, familiarize yourself with your institution's policies regarding FERPA and the archiving of student work. Many universities, for instance, require you to keep student exam booklets for a specified number of years. You may also be required to archive other kinds of materials.
Even if it isn't required by your institution, it's probably smart to retain your own records of final course grades and how you calculated them, agreements for incompletes, or any other documentation related to student grades.
If you're on the tenure track, you will probably need to provide copies of course syllabi, sample assignments, and student evaluations in your dossier. While preparing for tenure or the job market, it's probably a good idea to keep anything you think you might need to provide or reference. However, most of these materials can be archived in digital rather than paper form. If you save (and back up) digital files of your syllabi, then you can just print out new clean copies of them for your tenure notebook.
What is paper good for?
Many of your teaching materials already exist in digital form or can be scanned for archiving. Depending on your available space and your personal preferences, you may wish to keep some documents in paper form as well. For instance, while preparing for class, some people prefer to review last year's lecture notes on paper rather than from the screen. If that's you, then file them, rather than printing them out twice. But be realistic with yourself about how often you actually refer to these paper files. If you're archiving your syllabi and course handouts on your computer, you probably don't need paper copies as well, unless you're on the tenure track and want to have paper as an extra back up.
You definitely should keep paper copies of any binding legal documents, such as:
- job contracts or letters of employment
- publication contracts
- pre-tenure and tenure review evaluations
- notifications of salary changes.
How do you organize your files?
Some people prefer not to spend time setting up or maintaining an organizational folder structure for their digital files, relying instead upon keyword searching and the consistent use of file names to find the materials they need. As I mentioned in the comments to that earlier post, I prefer having a structured system because it saves me from having to remember to search for a particular handout I used in a course I taught three years ago. My file system serves as a kind of externalized memory (and does a better job than my brain would for this task).
The basic structure of your filing system should be consistent in your filing cabinet and your digital archive. As you set up your system, you need to consider three main elements: chronology, category, and accessibility. Your personal organizational preferences and needs will determine which has priority in your system.
Chronology is an important element for organizing teaching materials, as you probably already mentally categorize some materials by given courses and semesters. For some people, the particular course (name or number) serves as a main division, subdivided by semester; for others, each semester serves as a main division, subdivided into courses:
option A:
- ENGL 100
- Fall 2008
- Spring 2009
- ENGL 200
- Fall 2008
- Spring 2009
option B:
- Fall 2008
- ENGL 100
- ENGL 200
- Spring 2009
- ENGL 100
- ENGL 200
Neither option is inherently better than the other; use whichever instinctively makes the most sense to you.
Teaching related materials typically fall into one of five categories:
- Teaching Preparation: These are documents that you use and refer to as you're preparing for class, and are typically not shared directly with students. These files might include critical bibliography, primary reading, lecture notes, an archive of related visual images, etc. For many instructors who teach different courses that cover the same texts or topics, some preparation files are best kept separate from course- or semester-specific materials.
- Materials for Students: These are documents that you provide for your students, whether as in-class handouts, information on a course website, or files in a course management system. These might include the syllabus, study guides, supplemental readings, slides displayed in class and/or in the CMS, assignments, quizzes, and exams.
- Student Work: Depending on the course, you may need to manage or document student submissions such as papers, journals, blog posts, oral presentations, quizzes, projects, posters, and exams.
- Instructor Feedback: Your comments and/or grades might be returned to students on a physical copy of their work (such as a paper or exam booklet) or might be separate, and communicated to students via your CMS or other digital system. Whether you are using paper or digital formats, you may still need or want to keep a record of all feedback given to students during the course.
- Institutional Materials: These might include official grade rosters, documentation of medical withdrawals, disability accommodations, grade adjustments, and any other documents related to your course or your students during that given semester.
Again, reflect upon your actual teaching practices in deciding whether these categories should each stand as main divisions in your filing system or as subdivisions. Consider these different examples:
option A:
- Preparation Files
- Topic 1
- bibliography
- lecture notes
- Topic 2
- lecture notes
- Topic 1
- Course Files
- ENGL 100
- Fall 2008
- course handouts
- student work
- instructor feedback
- Spring 2009
- course handouts
- student work
- instructor feedback
- Fall 2008
- ENGL 100
option B:
- Preparation Files
- Bibliography
- Topic 1
- Topic 2
- Lecture Notes
- Topic 1
- Topic 2
- Bibliography
- Course Files
- Fall 2008
- ENGL 100
- course handouts
- student work
- instructor feedback
- ENGL 100
- Spring 2009
- ENGL 100
- course handouts
- student work
- instructor feedback
- ENGL 100
- Fall 2008
option C:
- Preparation Files
- Bibliography
- Topic 1
- Topic 2
- Historical Image Archive
- 1800-1850
- place 1
- place 2
- 1851-1900
- place 1
- place 2
- 1800-1850
- Bibliography
- Course Files
- ENGL 100
- Fall 2008
- lecture notes
- course handouts
- student work
- instructor feedback
- Fall 2008
- ENGL 100
option D:
- ENGL 100
- Preparation Files
- bibliography
- lecture notes
- Handouts
- Fall 2008
- Spring 2009
- Student Work
- Fall 2008
- Spring 2009
- Preparation Files
- ENGL 200
Again, there's no one right way to set up your system. Thinking about your research areas and teaching load as well as your personal organizational preferences will help you figure out which categories would be most helpful for you.
Accessibility depends upon your available storage and upon your own usage habits. Consider how much space you have for storing paper files, and the location(s) of your digital materials. Files that you need to refer to more frequently should be kept closer to hand, whether those are the materials from one or two previous semesters or key reference materials you use in all courses. Some instructors frequently refer back to previous semesters when preparing classes, and others don't.
Make it easy on yourself: put the archive of student exam booklets that your college requires you to keep for five years in that slightly rusty bottom drawer of your filing cabinet. Chances are pretty good that you won't be digging in that drawer very often. Put materials you reference frequently close at hand. Although in the digital world you probably don't have the rusty drawer problem, if you have a large backlog of teaching materials, you might want to archive those from seven or more years ago to an external hard drive or online storage service. Having a more streamlined file tree on your computer will make it easier to locate the items you actually use.
Consistency is key
Name your files using a consistent system, depending upon your choice of file structure and your OS. For example: my daily teaching notes are simply named "class notes 8-22-10" because I keep them in semester folders, which are nested within course folders, as in option A above. If I simply put them all in one folder for Fall 2009 or Teaching Notes, then I would need to name each file more specifically so as not to have conflicts.
Why change your system?
If you're completely satisfied with your current system for managing and archiving your teaching materials, then don't change a thing. But if you haven't moved offices or changed computers in a few years, then it's probably worth reviewing your system and evaluating whether it still works.
Changes in your teaching assignment, your use of technology, and your course content can require updating your system. For example, I used to maintain a file drawer of photocopied material from reference sources about authors I teach frequently in literature courses. I no longer do, for two reasons: first, the historical information I present to students has already been incorporated into my lecture notes; and secondly, all of that information (and more) is now available through digital databases. If I decide I want to expand my lecture on a given author, today I would go to a database, rather than to a photocopy, to look up additional information.
Natalie M. Houston joined the UH faculty in the fall of 1998. She specializes in literature and culture of the Victorian period, with a strong focus on material textuality and cultural studies. She teaches courses in Victorian literature, literary theory, women writers, and the history of the book.
Education
- Ph.D., Duke University
- M.A., University of Chicago
- B.A., University of Virginia
Research Interests
Literature and culture of the Victorian period
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