Miwa's Reading Notes: Constructing syllabi

I have found two major questions in the reading: balancing innovation and convention in the course design and how to encourage students to take necessary steps.

About the first issue, learning how to design a course from the past courses is a very helpful way to start with, but my question is how to develop something new to or different from the well-established design, including changing course policies, a textbook, and teaching method. I may find some items that may be added or changed in the previous course, though the challenge is that how to determine the appropriateness of the alternation. There should be concrete reasons to have the existing elements in the course, even if they seem to be improved, and it is hard for me to decide if my ideas are better than them or more effective for students to learn. It might be a matter of experiences as an instructor mainly, but also validity of the alternation. I always have both excitement and fear to have something new in my course, as I cannot see if my idea works or not until I actually try. I always wish to improve my course, though I am also keenly aware that classroom should be the place for students to learn, not for myself to learn.

The second issue of encouraging students to follow basics is my major interest, not only for the course design but also related to all teaching practices. I have read several useful techniques to help students to practice basics, such as including the syllabus as a reading assignment, the syllabus quiz, netiquette, and supplementary materials to learn basic academic skills. My question is to what extent I could accommodate students. A wide variety of students can take my course with different levels of academic skills, motivation, and expectation. There are some students who definitely need the instructor’s help to do something basic, but excessive accommodation can also discourage other students who don’t need it. They may feel that they are not treated as a mature and responsible person properly, loose their interest in learning, and even question about appropriateness of the course to satisfy their expectations. I also believe that promoting self-responsibility is one of important elements of higher education for any kind of courses. Making as many students learn well as possible is one of ultimate goals, but it is also certain that some students may be discouraged by over accommodation. How to balance discipline and accommodation is a challenge to maintain fairness and positive learning atmosphere in class.

Furthermore, I have come up with other questions, including contemporariness of the course design (e.g. how to effectively incorporate updated information of the field with the well-established course materials) and balancing students’ workload (how to determine the appropriate workload to avoid students making their work superfitial while maximizing the effectiveness of teaching).