I have been working on my syllabus for the Fall quarter, which doesn't begin until September. I have:
1. My name.
2. My e-mail address.
3. The times the lab is open.
4. The disclaimer about students with disabilities.
5. The textbook information.
6. My grading policies.
7. The official school policy on plagiarism.
The thing weighs 900 pounds, but I know I am forgetting at least one thing. Please tell me what I am forgetting.
Mathsquatch out.
(Edited due to a mathematical error... Mathsquatch is not perfect, and the Meanest Professor Ever really is mean! Er...Actually, it wasn't that mean to point out the obvious hilarity of the situation. Work on your meanness, Meanest Professor Ever!)
Reading schedule?
ReplyDeleteHomework?
Policy on attendance?
Course objectives?
Drop date? Final date to Withdraw?
Date and time of the final exam?
In-class quiz/exam schedule?
Suicide hotline number? (Oh wait...that's for you...)
Oh, and the irony of "Math"-squatch mislabeling the items with two #2s is priceless! ;)
ReplyDeleteGood god, you've forgotten "Classroom Etiquette," a section that now runs two paragraphs on my syllabus. You know, turn off your damned electronics and don't come in late and walk across my line of vision and unprepared commentary is a burden on your peers and all that. Some of my colleagues even have a little squib about how to write an e-mail to a professor (i.e., "Dear Professor X, not Hey Proffie!").
ReplyDeleteYou should SEE the syllabi where I work. They run 10-12 pages apiece because absolutely nothing can be implicit or taken for granted.
List your office hours so that you will know exactly when students will never come see you.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was teaching I did the same sort of thing. At the start of each course I distributed a handout which gave all the essential information. I didn't matter what I did or how much information I provided, few students ever made use of it.
ReplyDeleteI gave them my office telephone number and e-mail address, emphasizing if they contacted me first, I would set aside some time for them. Few, if any, ever took advantage of that but woe betide me if I wasn't in my office whenever *they* decided to show up to whine.
Official attendance policy?
ReplyDeleteList of materials on reserve at the school library?
Paragraph wherein, regardless of its subject, the first letter of each line spells "FUCK YOU ALL"?
Reading schedule, aka what's due at what times for plausible deniability if the students claim ignorance?
ReplyDeleteAll of the Official College Policies which must be included in EVERY syllabus for EVERY course no matter what. At Large Metropolitan Multi-Campus Two-Year Institution these include the Academic Honesty Policy, Equal Opportunity Statement, Americans With Disabilities Act Statement, Affirmative Action Statement, H1N1 Pandemic Policy, electronic communications policies...
ReplyDeleteweather cancellation policy...in some parts of the world this is essential info...
ReplyDeleteI was told that my syllabus was both too long and too negative. It's too long (because it contains everything the department and college want me to include, plus classroom policies, plus a rundown of the assignments, plus a daily schedule...all things I was advised to include in the syllabus to make it thorough) and too negative because it says, in plain language, things like, "I don't accept late work," and, "If you come to my office outside of my office hours, I may not have the time to help you at that moment."
ReplyDeleteFor the upcoming semester, my syllabus will be as bare-bones as I can make it, which will still make it about six pages long. (The information the department and college absolutely require, in their language, encompasses nearly three pages.) Everything else that the little dears need will be given out in handouts, as the department itself doesn't require me to file handouts with said department to document my competency.
The logic behind the criticism of my syllabus was that students can't take in all that information at the start of the semester; in other words, college students cannot comprehend too much information at once. Also, students should be told about their potential to succeed rather than their potential to fail, so telling them that I don't take late work is focusing on their potential to fail. I should tell them, instead, that their best chance of success is to turn work in on time.
I am not making this up.
Great Lakes Greta:
ReplyDeleteWhat you described sounded a lot like the place where I used to teach. Not only was my sole purpose as an instructor to get my students to "succeed" (whatever that was supposed to be) but I had to expunge from my language anything which might have negative connotations.
I once referred to an equation I wrote on the board as being "ghastly" because it had a rather convoluted appearance and one had to be careful in calculating results with it. I was reprimanded by my department head, who happened to be sitting in on my lecture at the time, that I shouldn't have used that description as it gave the students a negative feeling about it and would, therefore, be unwilling to learn it.
Then again, he reprimanded me several years later because I had my students address me as "Doctor" after I received my Ph. D. as it apparently intimidated them.
Go figure.
Greta, I think you work in one of the last departments I worked for.
ReplyDeleteI was told to allow students to nap, hand in late assignments, skip whenever they want, not read, not take notes, use their cells to phone or text whenever they wanted to, ignore syllabus policies regarding paper format, etc.
All while FIGHTING GRADE INFLATION!
Pedagogical schizophrenia became the least of my problems there.
LOL @ Mathsquatch's edit!
ReplyDeleteI'm actually not mean, 'squatchy. I'm really just a sweet, soft, fluffy pussycat. But that also means I got some sharp claws I use when someone riles me. Even then it's mostly just a rather painful scratch. Snowflakes squeal in pain when scratched. (They're all pampered wussies! All of them!)
Best to just pet me and keep me purring.
Ok, strike that. Makes me sound too pervy.
Just as an experiment: (1) Omit "You must put your name on everything you hand in" from the syllabus. (2) At the end of the semester, please give us a count of how many flakes said "But professor Squatch, you didn't say we had to put our names on our homework."
ReplyDeleteDude, there will be more than none who say it.
ReplyDeleteI am serious too.
There's a lot to be said for being intimidating. Nobody has every told me, "You didn't say we had to put our names on our homework." So it's not in my syllabus and (God willing) will never be.
ReplyDeleteThat said, no name is an automatic 5-point deduction, no matter how many points the thing was worth. And that's only if I can figure out whose paper it is by elimination.
If I get two such papers, they both get zeros. (Never happened yet.)
Maybe I should put that in my syllabus.
My syllabus is insane. The thing runs about 15 pages because every single damn semester I have to "add" things. The little bastards can't do their homework, but they do know how to work the system. So, to close that loophole because where I work basically says: "If it's not in the syllabus expressly written out, then they end-ran the system and you have to bend.", I write everything in it. A couple of semesters ago I taught an online class that was basically for education majors. They tried to take the test together. Yeah, that's called CHEATING. Their excuse was that it didn't say not to take the exams alone. HELLO!! IT IS AN EXAM! And you're going to be a fucking teacher???? I weep for the future. I have a whole section on classroom etiquette, like, don't spit anything onto anyone or the floor or light up a cigarette in the middle of class. Yes, it did happen. I have to tell them to STAPLE their shit, put their names on their homework (their FULL names...they are not fucking Beyonce or Sting), etc. Yeah, I have the schedule TWICE so they know EXACTLY when shit is due, yet they still ask. I even have them sign a syllabus contract saying they read the damn thing, understand it, and will abide by the policies (CYA move so they can't say they didn't read or understand it-a snowflake actually argued their way out of abiding by syllabus criteria by saying they "misunderstood" it and it was so "buried" that they didn't see it until it was too late). On top of that, I also have an assignment that asks them questions about policies, as well as a follow-up quiz on the major themes of the syllabus. Overkill? Apparently not enough since I STILL get complaints about not understanding or "knowing" things in the syllabus. They are just too damn lazy to open the thing and read it. It's such a joke that these students will EVER get jobs where they have to follow instructions closely.
ReplyDelete