I'm finding that I need to push ahead with details of my syllabi when I don't have all of the information. I'm trying to track down information on the student-led tutoring session that will be held from my Intro Physics class, but it appears as if no one currently knows. I can e-mail some additional people, or I can give up and just not have those details on my syllabus. I've already hit one scheduling problem: avoiding religious holidays. I spent time trying to lay out my tests around vacation days (Thanksgiving, Fall break), as well as major college events. *Then* I looked up the major religious holidays this fall and found out that I managed to place both of my Electronics tests (and one Intro test) on Jewish holidays. I have no idea what percentage of the student population here is Jewish, and my electronics course is so very small. I decided to leave the tests as scheduled, and added a specific sentence on the syllabus about re-scheduling tests for students if they conflict with religious holidays.
I think I am "done" with my Modern syllabus, and very close to done with my Electronics syllabus. There are still some details to work on for the Intro Syllabus, but the schedules of assignments and lectures are finished. The college (helpfully) has a "Syllabus Checklist" that I have been using. It is fairly well in-line with what I would want to put on a syllabus. I find that many of the "example" syllabi that I have seen are 2-4 pages here. My syllabi are 7 or 8 pages! Hopefully this will work out for the best.
The downside to the length is that students might not read the whole thing. Some faculty believe that it is important to dedicate time in the first class to the syllabus to stress its important. Others feel that lecture should be spend on science. I'm going to try the second approach - since I am 'requiring' students to read the textbook, I might as well require them to read the syllabus as well. For intro physics, I will have some questions on the syllabus on the first reading quiz.
I have the first "reading quiz" entered in for Modern. That was easy, since I got most of the questions from the previous faculty member. I've typed in some questions for the first "reading quiz" for Intro, but I'm not finished with it. I'm about 1/3 of the way done with the first lab for Electronics. I need to go back and do some work on the pre-class worksheet for Electronics relatively soon. I've e-mailed the students to let them know that they will need to do work for the first day of class. I hope they don't hate me already! Students don't yet have access to the online course system - I don't know when that will happen. But I'd like to have the first week of materials up on there before that...
This coming week I have New Faculty Orientation. It is a joint session for full-time (tenure track) and contract (adjunct) faculty. It is only a half day, and it looks like it focuses on resources and policies that I either have already used/learned about, or things that I wish I knew a month ago! I'm sure I will get something out of it, and it will be a good opportunity to meet other new faculty. It also serves as a marker that the academic year is really beginning and that the summer is almost over.
I had an amazing nightmare last night. In it, my PhD advisor was telling me that I had to do another defense. The defense I had (back in May) was to get my PhD, but I had to do a second one to show that I was ready to be a professor. This is particularly amazing in that it simultaneously was a few different types of nightmares: the "you didn't really finish your degree" nightmare, and (presumably) the "tenure evaluation" nightmare. It also was a terrible reminder that I haven't made progress on research this summer: either my "old" grad-school research, or my "new" research. Yikes! If only those kittens could type...
No comments:
Post a Comment