Changing your course syllabus as you are teaching the course

by Julie Dodd

How much can I change the syllabus while the course is underway?

That’s a question that I’ve been asked when I lead workshops for teaching assistants and new faculty.

Especially when you are teaching a course for the first time, it’s difficult to know if you are creating the right course design.

• Do the students have the academic background that you thought they would?
• Have you allocated enough time for major assignments and projects?
• Did you include enough time in class for you to present the key concepts and to provide time for students to engage in active learning activities?

You get weeks (or maybe just a few class sessions) into the course and realize that you would like to change the syllabus.

I’m a big advocate of syllabus assessment and redesign. However, I’d strongly recommend that during the term you are teaching the course, you should give careful consideration before making any significant changes to the course, such as eliminating a major assignment or test or adding an additional unit or project.

Orientation for new teaching assistants at UF – tips for success

Here’s the view from the back of Carlton Auditorium during a panel presentation about how to deal with challenging student situations.

by Julie Dodd

I enjoy helping new teaching assistants be prepared for a good start of their teaching at UF. Photo by Michael Hanna

There’s lots to consider when you’re a new teaching assistant.

That was the take-away for the more than 350 teaching assistants who attended the day-long orientation for new teaching assistants at the University of Florida.

That was a take-away for me, too, as a presenter — as I planned what to share with the new TAs in my talk and also as I listened to the questions the TAs asked during my session and the other orientation sessions I attended.

I talked about developing a checklist of what needs to be accomplished before school starts next week, from meeting with their teaching supervisor to reviewing their online persona/avatar to the classroom where they will be teaching and try out the technology.

I also explained what I’ve coined as the COPE Strategies that can help teachers develop a more student-oriented approach to their teaching.

Tips and checklist for creating college course syllabus

by Julie Dodd

We spent much of our last class meeting discussing the many decisions involved in creating an undergraduate course syllabus.

We talked about how Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956), updated by by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001), can help with one of the most important first steps in developing a course — determining the student learning outcomes (SLOs) for the course.

Developing specific and measurable SLOs can be aided by using action verbs to operationalize each SLO — http://uwf.edu/cutla/slo/actionwords.pdf