And so it begins (redux)

And so it begins. The last post was about the grand ideas. This is about the nitty-gritty.

Like every teacher, I'm deep in piles of old syllabi, academic calendars, production schedules, class registration lists, and a scramble of notes from past semesters. I look down my class lists and see students whom I know in the major courses, and all new names in my introductory class. Out of all of this I must come up with 25 or so scintillating learning experiences for each course, carefully linked to learning goals and sequenced for optimal development while observing all of the research and data on how students learn best. The good part is that this isn't the first time I've done it. The bad part is that although I have had some good classes, there always are students who don't achieve my learning goals for them. How does one deal with the disappointment that every student didn't get it . . . all?

I have my own history as an occasionally indifferent student, and I recognize that students do wind up doing triage on what gets attention. I always try to figure out how the courses that students do invest in can be the ones I teach. The content I teach generally is not very difficult in my introductory courses, and my measures do not really require much original thinking or conceptually difficult perspectives. Everybody can get a good grade, they just have to DO THE WORK.

So I review the syllabus and notes on these courses I've taught annually for years. I am facing those issues all teachers face: Which assignments worked well and which didn't. Why. Did the sequencing and the timing build toward the learning goals. How valid are all the learning goals. How much content is essential, beyond the curriculum framework. What would everybody expect students who succeeded in this class to know or to be able to do. What would we be appalled that a student who got a good grade didn't know or couldn't do.

How can we turn this lecture into an activity. How can we make these class experiences more active. What activity can we invent that will get at the goals that they don't get out of our lecture and won't get out of the reading they won't do. How can we motivate more through fascination than fear. Or even through fear. How can we create assignments that these students actually will invest in. Or will do at all.

Into all this, fit the new. What have we been teaching that is getting dated. What is happening on the topic today that we need to incorporate. What are the likely recognizable references for undergraduate students today -- they were born in the early 1990s and connect with historic and cultural references only since about 2000.

I have to think about how to make reference to current experience without sounding out of place and faux-hip. (See: the annual Beloit mindset list) And how to avoid dangerous dated references (like "hooking up").

And so . . . it begins. It will be great semester. I feel it.