Sitting down to write a syllabus for a theoretical class I might someday teach was not necessarily as easy as I originally thought it would be. The process started by me simply spending so much time thinking about exactly what type of class I would teach. Given my background in bioenergy, I decided to choose a class focused on this subject. Then, I had to decide in that vast and wide topic what exactly I would hope to cover within a semester course.
It was interesting to see how everyone’s syllabus compared to each other’s and to my own. Dr. Curry really helped me to see the areas of my syllabus that could be toned down and those that needed more information. He also emphasized to me the importance of having a late work/exam policy, which I had not fully considered before as how the student could claim that they can turn something in whenever they want, given that I did not provide an explicit policy.
Working with Mariana on the “deep-dive” portion of the assignment, I was able to again see a syllabus given on a different subject than mine which allowed me to better self-evaluate my own and make sure that flow and clarity were present. It was also nice to have the rubric for the deep-dive portion, as it allowed for looking for explicit details within the syllabus and checking whether they were there or not and whether they needed some more work or clarification. Mariana provided me with some really great constructive points that I feel helped me to strengthen my final syllabus!
Thanks for sharing Matt.
ReplyDeleteTwo questions:
In looking at your final product:
1) As a student, would you want to take your course?
2) As a teacher, are you excited to teach it?
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