Comments on: Crowdsource Your Syllabus Presentation

By: Partially Ordered Thoughts » Blog Archive » Crowdsourcing Applied Combinatorics policies

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:53:10 +0000

[...] in class. This time, I had a lot of explaining to do up front. Inspired by Maria Anderson’s post over at Teaching College Math, I decided to get my students to actually read at least part of the [...]

By: My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (weekly) | My Squirrelly View of Education

My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (weekly) | My Squirrelly View of Education — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:48:52 +0000

[...] Crowdsource Your Syllabus [...]

By: Derek

Derek — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:42:06 +0000

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.

By: Maria H. Andersen

Maria H. Andersen — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:59:52 +0000

@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).

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:36:21 +0000

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.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:07:30 +0000

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)

By: Jason Dyer

Jason Dyer — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:38:33 +0000

I get out of this just by having a one-page syllabus.