The Oxford Dictionary defines “syllabus” as “an outline of the subjects in a course of study or teaching.”
“Students who read a good syllabus are more likely to feel that course strategies have been designed to help them reach their goals, rather than merely as
It’s time to hand back the exams, and no one has done well. You’re as disappointed as your students will be when they see their grades. How do you get the class back on track? Offering extra credit assignments is one approach, but will that
I mainly teach undergraduate writing and research methods classes and wanted to share my experiences with mind mapping, also referred to as concept mapping. I’ve found that using it can significantly improve student papers. It’s an excellent innovation that requires student writers to visualize how
If you are a professor of a certain age, you may have had the experience that I had in my first semester of teaching. I asked, “Who’s seen Norma Rae?” (I wanted to use it to illustrate that working in a mill causes hearing loss.)
A learner-centered syllabus shifts the syllabus emphasis from “What will be covered?” to “How can the course promote learning and intellectual development in students?”
It is the beginning of the semester and faculty and students are excited about their classes. There is something about meeting your new students, a feeling you are transforming the lives of citizens. So, if the students are excited, why then, soon after the semester
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, it should be given that much of your time,” says Edward Tufte. Biology professor Amy Wiles says it was what got her started thinking about the importance of visual representations in her field: “Students needs to be
The syllabus is often described as a road map to the course. But along with laying out the direction and details of the course, it also conveys messages about what the course will be like. These messages are not communicated explicitly but are more a
Making college coursework interesting and relevant is a challenge. Recently, I considered using some sort of gaming strategy to motivate my students, but as I thought about what I really wanted them to gain from my class, it became clear that I needed to do
Assignments are one of those ever-present but not-often-thought-about aspects of teaching and learning. Pretty much every course has them, and teachers grade them. The grade indicates how much the student learned by doing them. But is this learning something that students recognize? Too often students
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