Chapter 6. Conceptualizing Your Course
This section offers tips and strategies on course design, with particular attention to constructing and using course learning goals to shape course readings, assignments, and activities. We offer logistical preparation suggestions and a guided discussion on making a syllabus. Finally, we wrap up the section by addressing gradebooks and recordkeeping.
Before You Conceptualize
Before you begin conceptualizing your course, make sure you know how much flexibility you have in the course design, how your class will meet (face-to-face, hybrid, online), and what departmental or college requirements your class has and/or fills. You will need to know if you are creating your own version of a course; adapting or working from a departmental syllabus for an existing course; receiving a course that has been fully planned; and/or collaborating with an instructor as a Teaching Assistant (TA). Regardless of the type of course you’re assigned, it’s a good idea to ask for sample syllabi from your campus department as a starting reference point.
Creating a Course
When designing a course, you’ll need to budget time to consider how you will organize readings and assignments to satisfy departmental learning outcomes or create your own. Planning a course from scratch is time-consuming, but also rewarding as it offers you an opportunity to teach your interests and research (more on this later in this chapter).
Adapting a Course
You may be assigned a course that has certain required components—including textbooks, particular lessons or units, or assignments—but that also may allow you space to teach topics of your choosing. Any requirements should be clearly communicated to you by your departmental contact. If not, ask for clarification about what kinds of flexibility you have in the course.
If you are adapting the course from one previously taught in your department, it’s especially important to try to get a copy of the existing syllabus and reach out to any colleagues who taught it in its previous iteration. What worked and what didn’t? If they could change something, what would they change?
Receiving a Course
Some departments will require you to teach a syllabus and course materials that are already set in stone, or that allow very little space for modifications. You should feel comfortable asking the department why the course is organized the way it is, and when the syllabus was last revised. You should read through the assigned readings and see if the logic aligns with your understanding of the discipline, or whether your approach to the topic is in tension with the one currently represented by the course.
If you are receiving the structure of your course rather than constructing it yourself, it’s important that you understand the implicit argument the course is making. If you disagree with the argument, you might raise your concerns with a trusted colleague at the Graduate Center or on the campus where you’re teaching, or with TLC staff.
TA
If you have been appointed as a teaching assistant for a course, you may have little say in determining the structure or contents of the course, but you can (and should) engage in dialogue with the instructor about the pedagogical rationale behind the course, and how you might best support the instructor and the students in the class. Developing a strong, collegial relationship with this faculty member is important, and will allow you to ask questions that can improve both your teaching and your experience in the course.
For more information about teaching in specific disciplines and at different course levels (introductory, intermediate, advanced), see our TLC Guide to Teaching in the Disciplines at https://tlc.commons.gc.cuny.edu/teaching-in-the-disciplines/.
Who’s taking your class, and why?
Consider whether your course is part of a general education curriculum and/or required for the major. What prior knowledge and skills does the course assume students will have? Many courses are built upon prerequisites and it can be helpful to acquire some knowledge about what your students should have already taken before enrolling in your course. But while a course may presuppose that students will have a certain skill set, it’s not always the case that they do. For this reason, it’s a good idea to consider prerequisites as you plan, but also to anticipate how you’ll support students with different levels of preparedness for your course. You should also consider how your department is situated within the college to develop a sense of what students may expect to get from their time in your course and/or in your discipline.
Does the department where you are teaching offer a major, and if so, how many students are in the major?
Or is it one that’s often referred to as a “service department,” which offers introductory or skills-based courses to students who will then major in other disciplines?
Will the majority of students in your course pursue careers in different fields?
It’s important to think about the “audience” for your course. Why are students taking your class? Is your course a requirement? Are there prerequisites students need to complete before taking your course?
When designing your course, it’s useful to think about why students might be in that particular class at that particular time, and how the experience may fit into their course of study and their lives. Understanding where your course fits within the department’s curriculum and your students’ college experience can help focus your efforts. It is important to remember that both non-majors and majors will likely come in with differing levels of preparation, needs, and interests.
Another other reason that students may find themselves in your class is because of when it’s scheduled. CUNY students are busy. Many work at least part-time, and squeeze coursework in between jobs and responsibilities at home. As such, CUNY’s classrooms tend to look different at different times of day: if you teach early in the morning or after 5 p.m., you may have a greater number of older students who work full-time. If you teach during the day, your class may consist mainly of younger students who recently graduated from high school.
Pathways
In 2013, CUNY instituted a common curriculum called Pathways which intended to make it easier for students from CUNY’s community colleges to transfer to its senior colleges. Pathways has a significant effect on college and departmental course requirements. Pathways reduced but did not eliminate the autonomy that CUNY senior colleges have over the general education curriculum. It is likely that the course you’re assigned to teach in your first year teaching will be a Pathways course, and it may be helpful to review your campus’ Pathways requirements to see how that course fits in.
Learn more about Pathways at:
http://www2.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/undergraduate-studies/pathways/
In order to best prepare to support your students, you might ask yourself the following kinds of questions:
If yours is the one foreign language or political science course students will take on the path to becoming an accountant or a physical therapist, how might that affect the design of the course?
If you are teaching a composition or writing-intensive course, how might the likely majors and career paths of your students influence the types of writing you assign?
If you are teaching in a STEM field, is this a required course that students will need to apply to graduate programs and will they need to earn a certain grade to get accepted?
Course Design
The type of course you’ll teach will shape your approach to conceptualizing and designing it. There are a number of ways to approach course design, and you will likely refine your method the more you teach. Regardless of which approach(es) you use, it is helpful to keep in mind the core aspects and work back and forth across them. These should each be included on your syllabus:
learning goals and objectives,
course narrative or argument,
calendar/schedule, and
course policies.
If you are teaching a course such as a language or math course where certain units need to be completed by certain times, you might start by representing those dates on a course schedule in order to get a sense of the pacing and begin to find places where you may have some flexibility in assignment design or instructional method. If you are teaching a survey course, you might begin with the Learning Objectives to see if a chronological, thematic, or other approach might work best.
Learning Goals
A learning outcome (or goal) is a statement of what students can be reasonably expected to learn while in your class, during a particular class session, or by completing an assignment. Think of learning outcomes as the skills or set of competencies that students will take away from your course. These can be tied to big conceptual understandings and skills that are important to students who are taking required courses as well students majoring in the discipline alike: Outside of the content and information of the course, what skills, processes, methodologies, etc. will students learn that can be applied across fields?
Your department may already have outcomes or goals identified for your course. If they do, seek a clear understanding of these objectives while you’re doing your planning. Also think about any goals or objectives that are central to your understanding of the material or your teaching philosophy that you want students to learn by the end of the semester.
The following guidelines can help you create strong learning goals:
Goals should be formulated to be as specific to your course and discipline as possible.
If you are going to assess student learning goals separately, then list them separately.
Use active verbs that represent a student’s ability to do something related to the course. For a suggested list of verbs, see
https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/facultyhandbook/documents/Bloomverbsrevised.pdf
(Note that the verbs “understand” and “know” are discouraged because they are too broad.)
The learning goals you define may be informed by the mode of instruction you intend to use. For example, if you are teaching an online or hybrid course, consider including learning goals that address how students navigate the tools of the course.
When you clearly communicate learning goals to students, not only do you make assessment and course design easier, but you also give students a map, a stronger sense of what’s expected of them, and introduce multiple ways and motivations to engage activities and material.
Starting to plan your course through an examination and consideration of your learning goals and working back from those goals to make decisions about content and assignments is known as backwards planning (or design). Backwards planning can help you sequence and scaffold the class since it invites you to think not only about what you want to cover in the course but also how you will know that students have learned the material being covered.
Some questions to consider in backwards planning:
What does a student need to know in order to demonstrate successful completion of each goal?
How will students demonstrate their progress? In other words, what kind of assignments or activities will they be asked to accomplish and how will that work help students satisfy each learning objective?
How will you evaluate whether or not students reach the objectives? What assessment criteria will you use?
The Syllabus
A syllabus is both a practical document and a pedagogical one.
Practically, the syllabus communicates key information around course expectations and should let students know what will be expected of them, what policies they need to be aware of, and how they will be evaluated.
In general, your syllabus should include:
basic information (course name and number, where and when the course meets, campus, semester, and year);
your name and contact information (how and when to contact you);
course description (your own and/or the department’s);
learning goals;
course materials;
grading breakdown;
course policies (attendance, late assignments, technology, etc.);
campus policies (plagiarism, accessibility accommodations, sexual misconduct, etc.); and
course schedule (a calendar with readings and assignment due dates).
The syllabus should articulate your course’s narrative or argument.
In addition to thinking about the syllabus as a practical document, conceptualize and develop your syllabus as a pedagogical artifact that establishes the narrative or argument of the class. Your syllabus then can become a document that makes explicit the structure that you’ve set up for the course while also presenting the arc of the semester and highlighting guideposts to help your students along the way. This argument may be presented directly in the syllabus in a “course description” paragraph or may be communicated through unit titles, thematic or conceptual considerations, the reading list, etc. In general, the more specific and explicit you can be about the rationale behind your choices and intentions, the better. The course description can also give students a sense of what your values are and what makes your course distinct, as well as introduce elements of your teaching philosophy. Thinking through the syllabus as an argument for and of your course can be especially helpful tool when trying to pick among readings. A syllabus with a strong narrative or argument presentation can also form the basis of a study guide resource for your students.
You might also consider allowing students to shape or contribute to the argument of the course by allowing them some freedom in terms of reading selections, course policies, etc. The more students feel connected to and a part of the course’s narrative, the more likely they are to actively participate and learn. Giving students the opportunity to have input on class content and policies can cultivate for students a sense of ownership over the course that can enhance learning for everybody.
Make your syllabus as accessible as possible, in as many ways as possible.
Distribution and Use: Hand it out in class, and post it to your course website or on Blackboard. If you make any changes during the semester, be sure you distribute and upload the revised version. Consider keeping parts of the syllabus as a “live document” or creating a system where students might write notes or make other annotations to it--built-in exercises or invitations to return to the syllabus can help keep fresh both course policies and the course narrative.
Accessibility: Make sure your syllabus is accessible to students with screen readers and with the use of accessibility checkers built into word processing programs. Further information and resources are available through CUNY Assistive Technology Services (CATS) at http://cats.cuny.edu/.
Aesthetics: Consider carefully what information you want to include and be mindful of the length of the document. Use headings to break up a long document, and be sure to keep in mind a clear purpose for the syllabus by asking yourself what belongs on your syllabus and what might work better as a separate document. Both in the layout and at the start of class when you go over it, teach your students how to read your syllabus.
See a sample syllabus template that includes additional details on its composite parts, downloadable and editable at http://cuny.is/syll-templates.
More often than not, designing your course is a process of taking away or cutting down material—both readings and assignments. Being specific and particular in what you select and why can help you decide what to pare down. You might consider building a rubric for yourself based on your course argument and learning goals in order to test each decision.
Getting Feedback
It’s always a good idea to let a friend or a trusted colleague review your syllabus and give you feedback on both the sense of the course it conveys and how it reads as a document. The TLC offers opportunities for this feedback in the weeks and days before the semester starts; we strongly encourage you to make use of it. Even the smallest tweak to a syllabus—increasing the font size of a heading, clarifying the wording of a policy—can improve the experience of your students.
Course Calendar or Schedule
Write down the dates that your course meets during the semester (usually twice or three times a week for fifteen weeks, though some of the community colleges have a different schedule). Refer to the campus’s academic calendar to make sure you note when you won’t meet (holidays, breaks, a Wednesday that becomes a CUNY Friday, etc.) From this calendar, you can begin to plug in your major assignments (and any scaffolded steps and due dates) and readings.
Using the calendar as a guideline, begin to think about how you want to divide material:
Does it make sense to have an exam before a break or after?
When would you like big projects or deadlines to happen?
Are you teaching in units or modules? (Sometimes dividing the semester into smaller, discrete chunks can help with your planning.) If so, pencil them in.
Are there any extended breaks as the result of holidays? If so, how could you plan your course to make best use of that time?
There are a lot of ways to format your course schedule. Think back to the classes you’ve taken and the variety in syllabus and course calendar formats you’ve seen. What makes sense for your class? For some CUNY campus-specific syllabus templates, check out our TLC Guide “New to Teaching,” especially the section “Before the Semester”:
https://tlc.commons.gc.cuny.edu/before-the-semester/#Write_out_the_calendar
Once you have the dates penciled in, return to the goals you have for the course: what do you want students to walk away with, and how will you incorporate it into your class?
Tip: Post materials to your course site or to Blackboard as early as possible. You’ll still have to make changes and modify as the course runs, but if you can get as much of the work around generating and organizing material out of the way before the semester, it will save prep time during the semester.
Some things to keep in mind as you fill out your calendar:
Be aware of your own deadlines, and stagger due dates when you can. Staggering due dates is especially important when teaching multiple classes.
Think about how long it takes to respond to student work (and how heavy it makes your bag if you are using paper submissions/exams).
Keep in mind the requirements of the assignment and how much time you want to offer students to complete it. If you introduced the material on a Tuesday, do students have enough time to understand and implement that material for an assignment due on Thursday, or would they benefit from the weekend?
Build in time (and due dates) for the scaffolded steps leading up to your big assignments (see next section).
Scaffolding
In assignment design, scaffolding refers to a process where assignments begin with a series of low-stakes (low grade impact) exercises which build up to a final, larger assignment. Scaffolding allows you to break down the component parts of a skill or assignment and to offer students the opportunity to check in at each juncture. In this way, scaffolding is both a planning and learning tool and follows a similar process to backwards design to consider what a student needs to know in order to complete a task or assignment. For many students, especially those who are not familiar with what goes into larger academic assignments, it is very important to show the structure and process of completing larger projects. Modeling this helps students tackle capstone or thesis work later on.
Sequencing larger, otherwise overwhelming assignments into manageable building blocks also opens up the learning process to both instructor and student. You might begin by asking students to create mind maps, identify a few sources, or create an outline and bibliography to build toward the ultimate assignment. Asking students to share drafts with their peers and instructor, give and respond to feedback, and revise and edit their work lets them reflect on their own learning process. It’s through this kind of meta-cognitive (thinking explicitly about how one learns/thinks) activity that students become conscious of how they learn, and what forms of support they need to learn best. A simple way to encourage meta-cognition is to ask students to submit a short note along with an assignment in which they describe how it went. Such self-assessments will also help you respond more constructively to student work. When you know students were struggling to formulate their argument or synthesize material, or were happy about their improvements in clarity and style, you can focus your own comments accordingly.
Preparing for Class
Once you’ve decided on your course schedule, think about when and how you’ll prepare for individual class meetings:
How much can you get done before the semester starts?
When will you make time each week to set aside for class preparation?
Can you schedule office hours directly before or after the class period? This way, you can either use them to prep for class, or get a head start on responding to and grading student work. (Note: Graduate Teaching Fellows are contractually obligated to hold office hours, unlike adjuncts, who are not required to hold an office hour when teaching a single class.)
Keep in mind that course preparation can expand to fill as much time as you have available to do it. You will be planning the structure of each class session in addition to doing the assigned readings, grading, managing student communication, and designing activities and assignments. However, as a graduate student instructor balancing many commitments, you may not always have as much time to prepare for class as you might like. Alternatively, you may find yourself over-preparing, running out of time in class, and not being able to cover all that you had planned. Be realistic about the amount of reading you ask students to complete and about how you can best use your time in class.
Managing your time includes balancing class preparation against your own research and coursework. When you plan out your work time, you may find it useful to identify what your goals are for particular sessions. Some use a time management tool like the Pomodoro/Marinara method to help track their time on task. You might also consider creating a focused work environment by checking your email only at scheduled times during the day and/or using social media blocking apps or timers limiting the time spent on these apps.
Tip: Always make sure that you have well-organized backups of your materials on your computer or in a file organizer/cabinet. Consider creating a “Teaching” folder with subfolders by the semester and course, and then different course materials (assignments, etc.). The semester will go by quickly, as will the years, and having a clear, consistent method of organizing your materials will be invaluable as your teaching career evolves.
Course Policies
Course Policies, both department required policies and ones central to your teaching philosophy, begin to establish the core tenets of your classroom. As you begin to think about the course policies central to your class, be sure to consider your (or your department’s) policies on the following topics:
Will you accept late assignments? If so, is there a penalty for submitting material late?
Will you accept assignments digitally? In hard copy only?
What are your technology rules? Are students encouraged to research, take notes or read on cell phones, tablets or laptops during class, or do you want your classroom to be a technology-free zone?
What does a student need to do to be marked as "present” in your class? (Will arriving on time suffice? Does the student also need to bring the required materials?)
What counts as “participation”? Will that be graded separately and, if so, using what criteria?
Do late arrivals after a certain time count as absences? Does leaving early? How does arriving late or leaving early impact a student’s standing?
Do you have specific policies for exam days or paper submissions?
Do you have any classroom etiquette policies or rules?
These policies should be clearly stated on your syllabus so that students know what to expect.
Selecting Readings
As an instructor, you may have the opportunity to choose both what your students read, how much they read, and what they do with that reading. Steve Volk, director of the Center for Teaching, Innovation and Excellence at Oberlin College, offers some questions to guide your selection process:
What do you want the reading to do?
Where does the reading come in the course, and will this impact your students’ ability to complete it?
Can less reading be more impactful?
If students are novices in our field, how should that impact our expectations for their reading?
There’s no magical number of pages that’s perfect for each and every course or class meeting. As you consider how many pages of reading to assign, make sure you’re clear–both in your planning and when you communicate with your students– about what kind of reading you expect students to do. For instance, do you expect them to engage in close reading—carefully examining the language and rhetoric of a text--and annotate carefully? Skim for the main ideas? Extract the main idea?
Don’t assume your students know how you expect them to engage with different kinds of texts. During the semester, it could be beneficial to model the reading practices you expect, or to give students guidelines that encourage those practices. One possibility is to share a text you’ve annotated, or to annotate a text together using an overhead projector or online annotation tools.
When selecting readings, make sure that students have the access and time necessary to fully engage with them—though also be prepared for some of your students not to have completed the readings before class! You should also consider:
the type of text (theory, novel, textbook chapter, philosophy, poetry, etc.);
what you want students to do with that text before, during, and after engaging with it;
what you want the text to do (provide background context, be the basis for class discussion, supplement the lecture, etc.);
whether the texts open up for place-based or problem-based assignments that would allow students to take a more active role in their learning;
what points of comparison or contrast you could draw among readings;
what types of assignments might grow out of the readings; and
whether the readings you’ve selected are inclusive of a diverse array of voices.
Check out this resource as you consider your reading list for the course:
Volk, Steven. “Size Matters: How Much Reading to Assign (and Other Imponderables).” Center for Teaching Innovation and Excellence. 23 Sep. 2012.
Teaching Your Research (or Not)
Academics often conceive of research and teaching as two separate practices competing for time. It is never too soon to start thinking about how these activities can feed each other since they are at the core of our professional practice. Often, we don’t control which courses we teach and the levels of correspondence of those courses with our academic interests vary. We may be fortunate enough to have a perfect match, but often there is a significant gap.
Could your research (or an aspect of it) be an underlying narrative of the course? Do you want your students to learn a methodology or a specific approach to your discipline? How would your research fit within a module or sequence?
To reach and engage students outside your discipline, you’ll have to introduce concepts that in your field may be taken for granted. What kinds of operations and adjustments will you need to make to present your research in accessible ways? What is the level of your students’ familiarity with your discipline?
As scholars, we spend a lot of time confined within very specific boundaries: a period of time, a geographical area, or a conceptual/theoretical frame. Gaining expertise and confidence talking about your research is a needed skill on its own and is a major reason you should pursue chances to teach it. Many opportunities (of publishing, funding, or creating professional connections) depend on your ability to explain both the nature of your research and its value. You need to present your research as part of the big picture of your field or discipline, while conveying what is unique about your work. Teaching requires you to find a balance between the general and the specific as you consider students as your audience.
Even if you don’t see an apparent overlap between your research and your teaching, bringing them together when and where you can is a win-win-win situation. Make room to create that connection; it will be worth the effort.
Creating Assignments and Assessments
In addition to helping faculty assess how effectively students are mastering course material, assignments provide the connective tissue between class meetings and give the instructor formative feedback to help them fine-tune their instruction.
Tip: Check out the many different activities assignments and project ideas that are adaptable across disciplines, along with a few first-day-of-class activities, to help you get started in Section III.
As you plan your course, think about what role assignments will play. Some questions to consider:
How will your assignments promote student learning? How will they connect to the learning goals of your course?
Will you use assignments to assess your students’ comprehension of course material (as in an exam or quiz) and/or will some assignments give students the opportunity to problematize, and eventually synthesize course material?
Will your assignments provide lower-stakes scaffolding for work that builds towards a higher-stakes culminating assignment or project?
Will you vary the types of assignments you’ll require? If so, how will you decide what to assign and when?
What kinds of assignments will be necessary to prepare students for the course requirements you’ve laid out? (For example, many courses require students to make in-class presentations. How might preparation for these presentations inform earlier assignments?)
How might secondary course objectives inform your assignment design? (If you’re interested in students working with technology in the classroom, for instance, could you design an assignment that makes use of the technology you’re exploring?)
If you’re breaking your course into modules or units, might it be beneficial to think about assignments in terms of micro (unit-specific) goals, and macro ones that ask students to make connections across units?
How will you represent these assignments on your course syllabus? (One option is to include a three-column table that lists, in the first column, the date; in the second column, the reading due; and, in the third column, assignments due. Another option is to include a table or list of key due dates on your syllabus.) Since you want your syllabus to be a manageable document, consider passing out or posting assignment-specific instructions in a separate document.
Finally, remember that assignments rarely go exactly as planned the first time we use them. Take notes on what worked and what didn’t, so you can iterate and improve on the assignment in subsequent semesters.
As you design assignments, keep in mind how you’ll calculate grades:
What percentage of the course grade do you want the major assignments (exams, papers, projects, etc.) to be?
How will you balance those with other coursework such as homework, participation, presentations, attendance, etc.?
What other categories should have weight in determining the final grade?
How will you assess and factor in attendance, participation and late work?
Are your course policies in-line with department and college policies? Remember, not all campuses have the same policies (particularly around attendance) so make sure you check!
Once you have your big category numbers, begin to break them down. So, if papers are 20 percent of the final course grade and you have four of them, do you want each to be 5 percent, or will they be weighted progressively more as students learn and build on new skills?
Think, too, about your assignment return rule:
.
Are you planning on returning papers the next time you meet?
If so, does it help if you have the weekend to grade? Or do you want to avoid weekend grading?
Do the students need feedback on the assignment before completing the next homework?
For more about grading and assessment methods, see the chapter on “Grading and Assessment” in this handbook.
Gradebook
Before the semester starts, take some time to figure out how you’ll organize your gradebook.
Will you keep grades by hand?
Use a spreadsheet?
Grade on an online platform such as Blackboard?
As you’re setting up your gradebook, keep in mind that students will likely ask you how they are doing in the class during the course of the semester. It will be helpful to you if your grades are in an easy-to-manage space so that you can access current grade information for students.
Colleges vary in terms of how long students have the right to dispute their grades. Be sure that you know your school’s grade change policy. In the event a student initiates a grade dispute, it’s important that you have the necessary documentation to support the given grade. Students may come to you a semester, a year, or even a couple of years after you’ve had them in your class. You’ll likely have engaged with dozens or hundreds of students since then, and the records you keep will be helpful in refreshing your memory.
Taking a few minutes to write up some notes after you’ve graded each assignment or taught each class and unit to reflect on what went well (and what didn’t), where students struggled, and how long it took you to mark or prepare can be a helpful tool for revising your class after the semester and balancing your workload.