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last.updated 8.7.09

 

Semester Syllabus with Rationale

Purpose

Before you begin teaching your courses each academic year, you will want to have a map or plan that helps guide you through the course materials to your pedagogical goals. As a novice instructor, you will want to write this plan out, not only to give you guidance, but to show others (e.g., mentors, future employers) your pedagogical plan. Likewise, you will want to be able to justify this pedagogy to administrative audiences; therefore, you will also articulate a rationale for this syllabus.

Instructions–Syllabus

Everybody is going to pretend that they are in the same situation:

  • teaching Freshman Composition I or II, or its equivalent (the focus of the course should be on writing, as opposed to reading–such as literature )
  • Tuesday/Thursday for 75 minute classes
  • sixteen week Spring semester in which week 9 is Spring Break (no other holidays) and week 16 is finals

Several of you will have syllabi that you will already be teaching from throughout the course of this semester. It is not acceptable to submit this as your work for the semester. First, if you are working from a syllabus that you have been handed, then you want to practice developing your own course. Second, having a repertoire of pedagogical options will benefit you if you need to adjust to different contexts. If you are not interested in revising your Freshman Composition I course, use this opportunity to conceptualize a Freshman Composition II course.

Develop a syllabus that explains what you will be doing each day of this semester. For each day provide a short description and rationale of the day's work.

  • make sure that you explain when things are due
  • make sure that it is clear what students will be doing during class, such as lectures, discussions, activities, workshops, or presentations
  • list materials (e.g., assignment sheets, quizzes, various medias) that will be needed. You do not have to develop the materials for each day (except for the Sample Assignment); just give your audience a brief overview of what these are and/or what they entail.
  • single-space each day; double-space between days

In some instances, it is uncertain what resources you will have when you will teach; therefore, develop your plan in the context of a reasonable ideal.

Instructions–Rationale

The 750-1000 word rationale is your overall explanation and justification for the unit. In essence, you are setting up the context so that your audience understands who the student audience is, and you are making a brief argument about how your approach to teaching this material is pedagogically sound by conversing with the field's scholarship; use detailed practices from your syllabus to support your argument where appropriate. Since you only have about two single-spaced pages, you will want to mostly use broad brushstrokes to talk about the semester as a whole, rather than trying to cover every minute detail.

In this rationale, you will...

  • explain the context of the course. Where do you see yourself teaching this course and how does your syllabus respond to the given student population?
  • explain the goals for the course. Because your writing assignments and the readings are the course's backbone (they help you to guide your students to those goals), place them at the center of your discussion. Then highlight some of the activities and other work that students will do to support the goals of fulfilling this assignment and understanding these readings, especially those practices that get repeated or are a cornerstone of your pedagogy
  • support your argument about the pedagogical soundness of your curriculum. With this document you are essentially arguing that an instructor who uses this pedagogy will be able to achieve certain pedagogical outcomes. Use evidence from your syllabus to support your argument.
  • For the sources you site, compose an accompanying works cited list in addition the 750-1000 words.
  • To help decide what should be explained in the daily rationale and what should be explained in this overall rationale, consider the following tips:
    • if it is a practice that is repeated multiple times or that is a cornerstone of the semester pedagogy (e.g., assignments, special activities) articulate it in this overall rationale;
    • if there is a practice that occurs only once or a limited numbers of times, include it into the daily rationale (you can make references back to previous daily rationales for repeated practices that you do not discuss in the overall rationale).


Criteria

Logistic:

  • rough draft due on November 9, 2006
  • final draft due on November 16, 2006
  • the syllabus should be between 10-15 pages
  • the rationale should be 750-1000 words (about two single-spaced pages)
  • 200 points

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

  • a sense of audience–Ask yourself, will any composition instructor be able to understand this syllabus based upon what I have provided here? will an administrator clearly understand this syllabus? This criteria is significant: another composition instructor should be able to pick up this document and understand how to teach this course (with some idiosyncratic wiggle room) without you being there. So as you review your own work before submission place yourself in that other instructor's shoes and ask yourself whether you could teach from this document.
  • a syllabus that is grounded in composition, rhetoric, and/or literacy theory based upon your rationale
  • cohesiveness between your syllabus and your rationale
  • a logical progression of activities and assignments that build upon each other
  • an understanding of the students the syllabus was designed for
  • a clear sense of what the instructor will be doing on a daily basis
  • assignments and activities that are executable and correspond with your course goals
  • a teacherly persona
  • appropriate use of conventions, especially a readable format and correct MLA or APA citations (if applicable)