Creating a syllabus and the importance of a peer review

Since the first moment the professors told us we would have to create a syllabus, I had clear the course I wanted to create. The truth is that I’m considering the outcome of this assignment as a tool I will use in the future rather than an academic task. That’s the reason why I pushed myself to make it as clear and as detailed as possible.

I created the syllabus for the course “Agroindustry crops: Cacao (Theobroma cacao L.). Yes, I know that the long name can be overwhelming but I don’t want to miss the opportunity to point out that this course focuses on the “food of gods” (theos  meaning “god”, and broma, meaning “food”).  I’m excited of teaching an entire course about Theobroma cacao for two main reasons: the first one is that I have been working on this crop for more than six years, and the second one is because I didn’t have the opportunity of taking such course. 

I intended to create a course were students bind together all their agronomy knowledge in one crop: cacao. I also wanted to define the current needs of the cacao sector as a frame for the course with the goal of showing the pertinence of the course’s topics. Receiving four “snap shot” peer reviews and one complete revision of the syllabus guided me create a more understandable and impressive document. In general, the peer review suggestions were focused on clarity and tone rather than in the course content and policies.

The reactions of the peer reviewers that realized my course was planned to be taught Saturdays at 6:00 am was, unanimously negative; “I would never enroll this class” one of they told me. Although my intention of selecting this time was to avoid interferences with my labor days (Monday-Friday), I agreed my classmates are right and that this is not a fair time for both the students and the professor (me). Another recurrent comment was about the “Travel Experiences” in the course. Travel Experiences are thought as essential components for accomplishing the course’s objective, especially the application’s ones. However, I didn’t have clear what students could do in case they are unable to attend to the travels. Improving the flow of the information was also a suggestion I took into account to enhance the clarity of the syllabus.

After having a broad idea of how should I improve the syllabus, the “deep dive” came and provided me the guidelines at a more detailed level. And it was possible not only for the comments that Azlan, my peer reviewer, did but also for the in-depth analysis I did to his syllabus.