Planning Your Semester

Starting a course is an arduous but manageable endeavor. We have laid out a rough plan for how you should conduct your affairs in terms of managing your SLC.: 

 

Much of the grunt work should be done the prior semester. Not everything may be accomplished, but make sure to prioritize the large-scale and time-sensitive tasks.

1. Flesh out your general course idea. Think something more specific than “a course in computer science”. What general area do you want to teach?

2. Shop around for any additional instructors or course assistants. (If you do something like a survey, you can use it to determine general interest in enlisting in your course.) You should finalize at least some of the instructors (if not all). You may finalize course assistants post course registration.

3. Find a content and pedagogical advisor for your potential course. Your content advisor should be very helpful for the next few steps.

4. If needed, do a knowledge study of your general area. Narrow down what specific topics your course will include.

5. If needed, learn the necessary material of the course (throughout the next few tasks)

6. Determine your general course structure. How will the day-to-day look like? What is your long-term timeline - both for the course and the work leading up to it?

7. Create a syllabus for the course. Here are some sample syllabi.

8. Submit the SLC Proposal to the registrar for approval. The is due a week before course fair at the latest - and course fair is conducted at the end the first month of the semester. So - kind of a hasty timeline.

9. If accepted, you should have the opportunity to discuss your course at the course fair. Though optional, you should capitalize on this. For a new course, this may generate the interest you need.

10. Flesh out any necessary lesson plans, assignments, lectures, in-class activities, and knowledge gaps you have.

 

In terms of a continuation SLC, we suggest the following:

1. Find additional student instructors.

2. Find content and pedagogical advisors

3. Re-learn the material (or learn it for the first time if you were not previously affiliated with the class).

4. Determine what changes you want to make to the curriculum by looking at the past course material, surveys, reflections, etc. left in the archive.

5. Update the syllabus for the course.

6. Submit the SLC proposal to the registrar.

7. Go to course fair.

8. Continue iterating and relearning the material.

 

Not much (hopefully) needs to be done in the semester you wish to teach. But you do have to:

1. Write up an IS proposal (if doing this for credit) to submit. Your advisor should be your pedagogical advisor - unless you want to make things more complicated for whatever reason.

2. Meet with your content and pedagogical advisors consistently.

3. Solicit student feedback somewhat regularly.

4. Archive the course at the end of it - it will be helpful for future iterations. If necessary, you may also start doing the work in terms of looking for the next teaching team.