How can professors make this document, which contains information written in different voices, intelligible to students?
Catherine Clepper, a nontenure-track faculty member in the P3 Collaboratory at Rutgers University at Newark, and Clare Forstie, dean of academic effectiveness and innovation at Saint Paul College, have some thoughts. The two academics, who met in graduate school, gave a presentation titled “Addressing the Overburdened Syllabus: Navigating Competing Demands” at the POD Network conference this past fall.
While Clepper and Forstie emphasized that there’s no right answer or one-size-fits-all solution to making a syllabus that meets all these needs, they did offer some good food for thought. Instructors might consider:
- Translating boilerplate institutional language — the academic integrity policy, for instance — into plain English.
- Adding headings or other short summaries that emphasize key information.
- Giving students some information “just in time,” when it’s relevant, in addition to or rather than relying on the syllabus to convey it. For instance, explain how assignments work in the course when giving out the first one.
- Creating a one-page cheat sheet or executive summary of the most important details on the syllabus.
“We had sort of suggested that when you feel like your syllabus is talking out of both sides of its mouth, like your voice and your institution’s voice, using your pedagogical values to streamline that,” Clepper said in an interview.
That means going back to your beliefs about students and your pedagogical values and evaluating the way your syllabus is laid out in light of them, Forstie added. That reflection can help instructors identify which information to play up or down, and how to convey it, too.
What do you think of these ideas? Have you taken steps to make your syllabi better reflect your pedagogical values to students? If so, let me know at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and your example may appear in a future issue.
Improving course evaluations
Some student subgroups are less likely than their peers to fill out course evaluations. A team of professors from Hamilton College conducted an experiment to see whether providing a more open-ended course-evaluation questionnaire and delaying when students were asked to complete it until the start of the subsequent semester would lead to more representative student responses.
They found that students were no more likely to complete the alternative evaluation when it was given at the same time, though students did write more on the alternative form. Delaying when the evaluation was sent out resulted in fewer students completing the evaluation — seniors, in particular, were less likely to submit it. But because the drop-off was less significant for Black, Hispanic, and multiracial students, the delayed form yielded a more racially representative sample of students.
A paper describing the experiment and its results was recently published in Studies in Higher Education.
The new paper is part of a broader effort at Hamilton to improve the way teaching is evaluated; regular readers may remember that we wrote about its findings on whether gender bias in evaluations could be eliminated here.
Faculty development
Recently, I asked for examples of ways to make faculty development on teaching more appealing.
Tolu Noah, an instructional learning-spaces coordinator, at California State University at Long Beach, wrote in to share one such effort:
“The program I developed was called the AI ‘No Prep’ Book Club, and the goal was to create a space where instructors could experiment with AI and engage in discussions with others about possible ways to integrate it into teaching and learning. The six-part virtual series was designed in a unique way that blended elements of a book club with a workshop. For each session in the series, we focused on a different section or two from the book, ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today. Each session followed a Four-T format:
- Touch Base (5 min.): Instructors did a warm-up activity related to the topic of the book section(s).
- Tinker Time (20 min.): Instructors independently read about topics of interest from the book and tried them out in ChatGPT (or another tool of their choice). They also completed a reflection activity in a Google Doc. The tinker time was kind of like a co-working space, where we were all exploring different topics of interest from the book while working together in the same virtual room.
- Talk (30 min.): We talked about the reading and what we discovered during our exploration time.
- Transition (5 min.): Instructors did a closing reflection activity. I also reminded them of upcoming sessions and shared an AI resource of the week.
“Unlike traditional book clubs that require participants to read ahead of time, this series was designed in a ‘no prep, no pressure’ kind of way. Instructors did not need to do any reading in advance; instead they had time during the session to read. There was also no pressure if they could not make it to all six sessions; they were welcome to come whenever they were available.”
I also heard from Julia Zay, a faculty member in visual and media art at The Evergreen State College and a faculty scholar in its Learning and Teaching Commons.
“I find it impossible not to bring my arts pedagogy to my faculty workshops, which means I typically use play and some nondiscursive modes of engagement to encourage faculty to access parts of themselves that are often concealed in professional and classroom environments on campus — such as vulnerability, compassion, playfulness, and a beginner’s mind.
“For instance, last month, I facilitated a workshop for new faculty on career development where we used drawing to visualize career paths and work/life balance. Additionally, last summer, I led a workshop for faculty on ‘contemplative pedagogy,’ which I define quite broadly as including experiential, creative, and embodied techniques drawn from my arts-teaching methods.
“I’m heartened to think that faculty desire something new, out of the ordinary, perhaps more authentic, in professional development around teaching.”
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
—Beckie
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