I never teach the same composition class twice. I redesign and reconfigure every single semester. Part of this is because the students, the teaching situation is different. Part of this is my desire to not be bored. Part of it is coming across new texts and ideas and wanting to teach them.
Usually I come up with ideas the semester or year before as I come across things. I rough out the 15-16 week schedule, adding links and readings as I come across them. Then I tweak and move things and get rid of others. I move pieces around until the internal logic of the class makes sense to me.
For the upcoming academic year I'm planning on 102, composition I be themed around dystopia, and I'm test running this in the class I'm teaching this summer. This came together pretty easily. Students will define dystopia then analyze it. It's allowing me to pull together some bits I've tried out this past year. Students had mostly not seen The Matrix, but really enjoyed it. We had a great mini-lesson on AI and Google mistakes, like telling people to eat rocks. As always, I fiddle with things and work out ideas in my teaching notebook.
This past semester we had someone present on using the TILT template, which I used this summer. I like some things about it, it helps me clarify what I'm looking for and complements using Understanding by Design. I dislike the rigidity of it, the checklist, that I've found often discourages students to explore and play and be creative.
For 103 I wanted to work in AI and ethics and conspiracy theories. This is the one where the narrative, the flow, has eluded me. I pencilled in a course. I came back and tried to identify "chunks" that I wanted.
At the end of each semester students write relfection letters about the course, readings, me, the syllabus and I use these as well as the more formal course evaluations, to revise and tweak my classes. This past semester I also had students annotate the syllabus, which I don't do every semester, but I do regularly, to see if the parts and policies are working. So in addition to designing new content, I've also redesigned my syllabus layout. The top now has "Class FAQs," then a written rationale of the class design/theme, which I used to include but had dropped. I cut the glut of compliance language bloat that had accumulated. I've moved policies to under the week by week schedule that we use all the time.
Every semester I go back and forth on grades. I have not really done grades in my classes in years. What I DO is because I'm required to report progress reports in week 4 and 11, and midterms in week 9, and final grades in week 16, I have students do reflections at those times and essentially report what they say. I put in the syllabus that while I rarely need to,, I reserve right to push back. This past semester was a bit different. I taught one upper level English class that actually had few English majors, so I went with a four assignment, each 25% set up. And for the first semester I can remember in a long time, I had students in composition who argued for "A"s that had barely come to class or work.
I have gone round and round. Do I do no grades because it is better for students? Or because it does not put me in conflict with students? Are students getting away with things or do I need to redesign a reflection? What is best serving students? Should I put weighted assignments/grades back into composition? If I have care baked into policies, are grades doing harm?
One of the things I really love about not doing traditional grades is that I don't have to build class assignments around when grades are due so I'm not trying to chop modules in four week chunks. I can spend more time on the process for learning.
Either approach I KNOW I have to address the last month of class. This past semester work added a week 11 second progress report so students knew between midterms and finals how they were doing. Historically there has been an issue with students disappearing those last few weeks. In the past I've considered this in my course design, having that time be project time, flex time, that students can use as they need to as long as they turn in the project. But this past semester I noticed that students who were doing great week 11 then totally checked out the last month, so final grades looked very different. I think I have a fix for this. We use a reporting system for progress reports, so I think I'm going to change the reflection I have them do. Usually they write a reflection using prompts I give them. Instead, for this progress report, I'll have them respond to what I post. That they agree/disagree, and, most importantly, what they need to CONTINUE to do the last month in order to end that way.
We'll see.
Returning to 103, I *think* I've found the internal logic. I don't want the misinformation, conspiracy theory bits to feel forced. BUT I really love the idea of using "War of the Worlds" radio, world is flat podcast statements, and ethos, pathos, logos, and how they knw what they know, to walk them through research.
So, I went through and rearrnaged chunks on tiny Post-Its.
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