Pre-semester Planning

"The greatest enemy of understanding is coverage—the compulsion to teach everything in the textbook just because it’s there."
--Howard Gardner and V. Boix-Mansilla

1. Creating the Syllabus

Find Out Who Decides the Syllabus

Step One: Find out your level of responsibility for the syllabus.
GTA input on syllabi varies widely. Some GTAs follow a pre-set syllabus that has every activity spelled out to the letter, while other GTAs are given a textbook a couple days before classes begin and told, "Here you go." Discussion leaders work with a professor who does the lecture and often determines the discussion topics—but you may have freedom within the discussion session to create plans and choose teaching methods. If you’re in a lab—or are a grader—your input on a syllabus will be minimal, but don’t discount paying attention now to constructing syllabi: if you remain in teaching, your time will come.

Here’s a hierarchy of those involved with syllabus creation:
1. Your department
2. Your professor/ teaching mentor
3. You
4. The students (Really! You can offer students some choices—see "Move to a Learner-Centered Classroom" under #3.)

Step Two: Find out whom you turn to for help in preparing your course.
• Rely primarily on your department. You are a graduate teaching ASSISTANT, and if you need help determining what to do, your department is obliged to provide satisfactory help.
• Lucky you if your department has a training program or a strong, active mentorship. Use that relationship to guide you through the questions that arise in planning your semester. Some departments have created teaching handbooks or files for GTAs; ask what’s available.
• Seek out other GTAs and form a teaching group. Share your ideas and don’t hesitate to ask for support from your colleagues.
• Ask a respected teacher outside of your department. Whose teaching do you recall with admiration? Contact those people—odds are that they’ll be pleased to talk with you.
• Come to the CTE. Go to our on-line library catalog to see the many teaching books, articles, videos and tapes available, and then come in to read or check out materials. Meet with us—our job is to support excellent teaching, and we’d like to help you.

2. Syllabus Coverage

How to Improve Your Teaching with the Course Syllabus
A good overview of what to include in a syllabus and its basic functions and components.

Seven Basic Functions of a Course Syllabus
1. Helps plan and strengthen your course.
2. Introduces you to students.
3. Explains why students should take your course.
4. Explains the various aspects of your course.
5. Explains how students will change as a result of completing your course.
6. Communicates the nature and content of your course to faculty.
7. Provides a documented record of your teaching career.

Essential Components of the Course Syllabus
• Basic identifying information
• Instructor’s personal information
• Texts and other materials
• Course description
• Course objectives
• Course requirements
• Course calendar
• Grading procedures and scales
• Caveat/ Conclusion
Adapted from Appleby, Drew C. "How to Improve Your Teaching with the Course Syllabus." APS Observer, May/June 1994.

Creating a Syllabus. KU Omsbudman. A ‘by-laws’ type document, with important points about how students interpret syllabi information.

Semester calendar on registrar’s web site that shows all the scheduled class dates; you can find the final schedule on this site as well.

More at the CTE:
" Sample KU Syllabi," various KU teachers. A wide-range of syllabi used in KU classes.

3. Encourage Active Learning

If you’re new to teaching, the next two ideas will be particularly helpful:

Satisfying All the Students Most of the Time
KU Professor Steve Shawl shows how to adapt an introductory-level course to a multitude of majors. Varied assignments and approaches encourage students to engage in their learning process.

Shawl’s seven premises:
1. Learning is done by, not to, the student.
2. Students must know in detail what is expected of them.
3. Learning will occur only if there is active involvement by the student.
4. Testing should be a vehicle for learning--not only for grading
5. Passing a course means students have a minimum core knowledge that the teacher has specified.
6. Students should be allowed some flexibility in subject matter beyond the minimum core.
7. Students may be able to learn fundamentals better from peers.

The Course Organizer Routine
What are the critical questions and concepts that underlie your teaching—what learning does it lead to? Map out the course organization step by step to make overt the important ideas for students to learn.

Course paraphrase. Go beyond a catalog blurb and write out in your own words what you want students to learn or understand. This forms the basis for planning the course; with a clearly articulated summary, it will flow easily; without one, the entire process is muddied and thus frustrating for you and the students.

Course questions. Consider the importance of the course content. What captures the essence of critical content? What would you want students to remember if you had a chance to visit with them a year later? Out of all the information they could learn, what are the central ideas that tie it all together? This section is worth examining in detail.

Critical concepts/units. Now that you’ve decided on the questions, pull out their embedded concepts to form specific units. Create a visual representation to represent the progress of your core ideas. Make your ideas connected, ordered, hierarchical, and simple.

Course rituals. Determine what concrete procedures you will use to support the overall purpose. Use these rituals to enhance content mastery, teach learning and social strategies, and build a learning community.

Adapted from Deshler, Donald. "The Course Organizer Routine." Center for Research on Learning. August 1997 presentation.

If you have some experience teaching, try using the next two ideas:

Move to a Learner-Centered Classroom
Students can learn more if the class moves from a teacher-centered approach (that focuses on teachers making all the decisions about what students will learn, how they will learn it, and how they will be evaluated) to a learner-centered approach.

Having choices equals having ownership of the learning. Trust students to make responsible learning decisions within a presented realm of choices:

Course activity and assignment decisions. Design sets of assignments and let students choose which set they will complete. If the assignments are of comparable difficulty, there won’t be a concern with "easy" versus "hard" choices.

Course policy decisions. What policy areas do you absolutely have to decide and what areas can students shape? One area often hazy to grade is participation. Have students work in pairs or groups to list behaviors that do and don’t count for participation credit.

Course content decisions. Students rely on your expertise to guide the course content; however, they can have limited involvement in the process. If everyone has to be exposed to certain readings, have the students (singly, in pairs, or groups) select from a finite list and report to the larger group. Offer a choice between oral or written reports for some projects. For reviews, have students give you a list they want covered and design the session around that input.

Course evaluation decisions. Let students suggest criteria for grading participation or for assessing various assignments. Can they help determine what percentage of points goes to different elements of oral reports? Or written reports? This doesn’t have to apply to all projects--perhaps just one graded project. On smaller assignments, allow students to select some for participation points versus grades.

All these decisions don’t have to be made on the first day of class, but to avoid confusion, severely limit any later choices. Once the class is underway, students feel there’s a "contract" in place that they don’t want disrupted.

Adapted from Eddy, Judy. "Moving to a Learner-centered Approach Benefits Students," Teaching Matters, August 2002. 7.
Markert, J. R. "What Makes a Good Teacher? Lessons from Teaching Medical Students." Academic Medicine, August 2001. 809-810.
Weimer, M. "Let Students Make Classroom Decisions." The Teaching Professor, January 2001. 1-2.

Problem-Based Learning
Overview and steps of a problem-based approach in a thorough packet of information. Come in and make a copy of the sections that will help you.
• Problem-based learning poses real world situations that students must study and find solutions for.
• The teacher facilitates their work through resources, guidance and instruction.
• It often replaces lectures with small discussion groups who assume the greater responsibility for learning.

Common features of a problem-based approach to learning:
1. Learning is initiated by a posed problem that the learner wants to solve.
2. Problems are based on real-life, open-ended situations.
3. Students are responsible for identifying, finding, and using appropriate resources.
4. Students work in permanent groups with access to an instructor.
5. Learning is active, integrated, cumulative, and connected.
6. Assessment emphasizes integration of knowledge.

Adapted from KU CTE file, "Problem-Based Learning." Contains multiple handouts, sources.