Crowdsource Your Syllabus Presentation
September 2nd, 2009
You know what I hate about the first day of class? Going over the syllabus. You know that the students do nothing but listen to instructors read them the syllabii the first two days of class as they meet all their instructors for the first time. Not only is this tedious for them (and I wonder if they even remotely pay attention), but it’s tedious for me too.
This year I vowed to turn all my classes into student-oriented learning as much as possible, starting with DAY ONE!
The syllabus was five pages long. I had students count off by 5 and put them in groups. Each group received copies of one (and only one) page of the syllabus. They had about 5-8 minutes to read that page and then decide what to present and how to present it.
During this time, I circulated to answer questions that the groups might had (clarifying points mostly).
The five groups then presented the five pages of the syllabus, highlighting what was important to THEM and phrasing the main points in their own words. The class was very attentive (especially since they had not seen any page but the one they had).
Then I passed out the syllabus to everyone.
Completely painless. I wish I had thought of this one years ago.
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Posted in Classroom Life
I get out of this just by having a one-page syllabus.
Very clever!
Sounds like someone has been to a differntiated instruction workshop. (If you haven’t, I apologize, but there are lots of ideas along these lines)
@Sarah LOL, I just had to look up “what is differentiated instruction” on the Internet. Never been to one, I’ve just recently spent a lot of time preparing a presentation about the skills we should be teaching students for their future careers (flexibility, communication, creativity, learning how to learn etc.). So I have completely overhauled my courses (as much as possible) to center on learning (and learning those skills).
I stole, er, tried this idea with my class after you Tweeted about it. It’s an 8-page syllabus and I made up a list of 28 questions that get to the most important info in the syllabus, then did pretty much the same group exercise you did. Students ended up working effectively in groups and generated a one-page executive summary of the syllabus. Terrific idea, so thanks for letting me appropriate it.
This is a thing of beauty. It seems so obvious now that you mention it, but I’ve never thought of doing something like this. My strategy has been to start the first day of class with math, then go over the syllabus in the last 20 minutes. This is way better, as it gets students working with each other in groups right off the bat.
As for Jason’s suggestion of a one-page syllabus, I do too many things in my course that are non-standard (at least in my department) that I need to devote a fair amount of space to describing them for students. Clarifying my expectations for their roles in the class is essential, and I like to do that verbally and in print.