Monday, August 03, 2009

designing a course syllabus (step 2 of 9) - course calendar

the second step of designing a course syllabus is to create the course calendar.

find and download an academic calendar for your college or university. for example, here is USF's 2008-2011 academic calendar. you can usually find your academic calendar by visiting your college/university's web page and searching for "academic calendar."

type in all days that your course meets. consult your academic calendar and note which days are vacation days - thanksgiving, spring break, etc.

at this point, your course calendar will look something like this: once complete, stare a while at your course calendar. get a sense of its temporal nature. appreciate the months that your course occupies. become familiar with how many weeks your course lasts, locate the half-way point of the course, and dream about the final weeks of the course.

then, save your document, shut down your computer, and celebrate your progress.
Posted by david silver at 8:55 PM Labels: designing a course syllabus You just rock, David, you just do!

9:40 AM, August 04, 2009 david silver said...

why thank you Penny! the sentiment is mutual. =)

11:15 AM, August 04, 2009 Lanny Arvan said...

David - I'm guessing from what you have so far that this is intended for new instructors. They may be a bit heads down in their approach, for obvious reasons. It might be useful to go a bit out of their comfort zone and think about the next offering of the course and the offering after that. What changes are made to the syllabus? Is it polishing only or ongoing revision? Having some answers to those questions might inform the initial effort.

1:55 PM, August 04, 2009 Hey Lanny - thanks for the comment and the excellent suggestions. actually, as you will see, i hope, in the subsequent steps, i am designing this how-to series for both new and seasoned teachers and syllabus-builders. i hope to address your points in steps 4 and 5.
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