Example Syllabus

Reflection

In a Delta course entitled “Delta: Teaching in the College Classroom”. I had an assignment to create a syllabus for a course I would want to teach. I decided to prepare a syllabus for an advanced general chemistry course, a one-semester version of the typical general chemistry sequence. I took a similar class my first semester of college, and being a part of the class was instrumental for determining that I wanted to continue to pursue chemistry. I also was a Teaching Assistant for a similar class at UW-Madison, and saw how the course looked different when the class size was much larger. I took this Delta course in 2016, and it was the first Delta course that I was a part of. It was very early on in my development as a teacher.

Looking through the syllabus almost three years after it was prepared, I see many that things that I like, and others that I would now change. One intentional choice I made was to hold office hours in a neutral location, which was something I had learned helps to lessen the apparent power dynamic when students are coming for help. I’ve learned more recently in an inclusive teaching workshop that using the terminology “office hours” can be confusing to some students, particularly ESL or international students, who may interpret the language to mean that those are times the instructor will be in the office doing other things. If I were to implement a version of this syllabus, I would change the wording to be something like “open hours”, “help hours” or “student hours”. In an early section of the syllabus, I should also define active learning, give a reference for the “Atoms First” teaching approach that I chose to model the course after. Giving different options for the textbook is an important way to support and inclusive classroom, which I could hopefully expand on once I had more information about the institution the course would take place at. I would hope that in this situation there would also be a textbook on reserve in the library that students could check out, and I would have my own class copy that students could check out as well.

Another thing I like about this syllabus is that I emphasize in the course description that the skills and knowledge gained in the course will be useful beyond chemistry, into other STEM fields and even outside of STEM fields. This has continued to be a theme in my own teaching philosophy, making the subject accessible and applicable for students outside of the chemistry major. Before I would implement this syllabus for a course, I would like to further expand on this point in the syllabus with the knowledge, language and experience that I’ve gained on this topic in the past few years.

The syllabus expresses clear learning outcomes for each of the units of the course. These learning outcomes fall on all levels of Blooms Taxonomy. While in understand my intention in how I had prepared this section, I have learning outcomes from low level to high level as the course moves from earlier units to later units. In actuality, there should be a range of learning outcomes from low to high level for each unit. This section should have is the highest level outcomes for each unit listed here, as sort of the “ultimate goals”, with the understanding (either explicitly or not) that lower and mid level learning outcomes are developed within each unit. Later on in the document, the course schedule is broken into themes. This would be an opportunity to list the lower and mid level learning outcomes for each unit as the weeks proceed.

I like the clear expectations for myself and for students in our roles in the course section. I think that my understanding of myself and my role as an instructor has evolved a lot in the past three years. I would like to add more about inclusiveness and supporting different learning styles and backgrounds in this section. Along those lines, while this section is clear, I don’t want it to sound brash – I would like to reword both of these sections, but especially the one about the students’ role in supporting their own learning.

I like the way I lay out the assignments and grading such that students get a reason for why the grade consists of these different assignments, how I’ve worded what students will gain from each of these activities, and that the quizzes can act as formative assessment, are somewhat low stakes since they will be self graded. In my future classroom I will use more frequent, even lower stakes formative assessment as well for students to have the opportunity for metacognitive reflection and for me to see how the class is doing. Additionally, the closing section on classroom policies is important and I would like to add to it, now with my deeper knowledge of inclusive teaching and creating learning communities within the classroom. To foster a positive learning community, I would want to incorporate a collective syllabus review in class, where students could ask questions and we would collectively compile a list of community agreements, including inclusive language and discussion guidelines.