Syllabus, Schedule, Rationale Writing

M4.1 Introduction.html

Module 6: Introduction: Syllabus, Schedule, and Assignments

This module will address the nuts and bolts of building your own syllabus, schedule, and assignments. There are lots of ways to build a syllabus. I will copy one chapter from  First Year Composition: From Theory to Practice that gives you an example and I also have posted several ENGL 1101 templates from GS. These samples will be important to help you see how teachers in the field build their classes. When you think about a syllabus you can build it around:

• a theme, if desired (music, climate change, etc.) and choose readings, videos, and assignments around this.
• or you can direct it toward a specific audience (second language learners) and focus your choices there
• these are just two examples... 

Here at GSU, there is freedom to choose your textbook and assignments, though there is one common assignment they use for all classes so that it can be assessed by the department with consistency across all sections. 

The link to our department documents for First Year Writing under "Resources" and "Links" for M6: https://cah.georgiasouthern.edu/writling/first-year-writing-for-faculty/

There will be elements of a syllabus that are simply required. Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) are one of those things. We will all use the SLOs from the department of Writing and Linguistics for consistency. From these, you can build out your assignments with greater intention. Scaffolding assignments is one method that can be successful. That is, you can build each assignment on the skills you taught in the last one. So maybe your first assignment is a short opinion piece about a current event. This one can teach about structure and voice. Your next assignment might be an information piece about another current event but this one needs to add research and thesis building. In COMP 1101 classes, we need to be thinking about the skills we are teaching in our assignments. These should align with SLOs but also be linked to each other. This is how we can move students in a comfortable progression in rigor.

I also encourage you to incorporate multimodal assignments into your syllabus. This means that you give students a chance to create their communication in a visual form like a video, slideshow, infographic, etc. 

I am going to encourage you to build your dream syllabus keeping the above in mind, especially the SLOs. If you get hired and they tell you what to teach - it's okay. You can still use all the ideas you had in your own syllabus about how to teach and why you teach.

To get you started with ALL the framework already there to personalize, I have provided  TEMPLATE syllabus for ENGL 1101.  Please feel free to start with this and then personalize it.

Rationale Essay:

This leads me finally to the Rationale Essay. You should have a supported reason for most of what you choose to do in your  classroom. Like the Teaching Philosophy, you base the syllabus and assignments on some of the theories we read. If you are going to direct your syllabus to a Second Language Learning audience or for students interested in media (like our template), for example, you need to base assignments on some of our readings and might need to find more to support your choices! You might choose and area where we did not read a lot - feel free to add your own sources. This rationale essay lengths (undergrad and grad) are in the Syllabus assignment descriptions here:  Course Syllabus

I encourage you to not only assign multimodal projects for your students, but also I encourage you to use multimodal techniques for this rationale essay. You can add infographics, insert personalized videos about your teaching decisions, add images, etc. Remember that an essay can be written or visual and sometimes both. You need to "show the work" of your syllabus by discussing the theories you are using for best practices, but this can be done textually and visually, if desired. What matters is that the research, structure, and clarity are solid.

Learning Outcomes

At  of this learning module, you will be:

• Have a completed syllabus, schedule, and assignments
• Complete a draft support essay called the "Rationale essay" which shows how you used material in the class (including guest lectures) to build the syllabus and assignments. 
• Engage in a workshop for assignments.
• Engage in an optional workshop to help revise your support essay. 
• Revise essay and materials for final submission.

Questions?

If you have a question about the tasks in this module, please submit it to the Questions for the Professor discussion forum under Communication > Discussions.