Hey Professors,
I hope that you’re holding up these days, and managing to take good care of yourselves.
I wanted to re-release part of an earlier podcast episode that I did on syllabus and course planning, especially for new professors. This was an episode that I created for those of you who are taking up new faculty positions this fall and who are teaching for the very first time.
When I re-listened to Episode 24 (Planning a Syllabus for Your First Time? Consider These Tips), which was first released in July 2024, I realized that so much has changed in just 12 months. In the United States in particular, the landscape of higher ed definitely feels like a very different place from even one year ago. And much of that is due to the damaging and destructive policies set forth by the new administration that directly impact higher education.
But more globally, the advancement and usage of AI technologies in institutions of higher learning have already started to shift how faculty are approaching their course planning and assessments—whether they like it or not.
Concerns Over How AI Has Been Integrated into Higher Ed with Limited Oversight
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Marc Watkins addresses the fact that many AI tools have already been introduced onto college campuses. These come by way of pretty stealthy updates to learning management systems like Canvas or Blackboard, research databases that your library uses, and other tools that already existed on university campuses.
As Watkins states, “You simply wake up one day to an e-mail announcing the app you’ve used for years now has a slew of AI features—without discussion, warning, or any sort of training.”
In response to these types of concerns re: how education technology and AI have been integrated into teaching and research in higher ed with limited oversight, the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) recently issued a report on AI and academic professions. The report issues 5 key concerns:
1) Improving professional development regarding AI and technology harms
2) Implementing shared governance policies to promote oversight
3) Improving working and learning conditions
4) Demanding transparency and the ability to opt out, and
5) Protecting faculty members and other academic workers.
I know that some professors in recent years have taken considerable measures to create course policies in their syllabi that ban the use of generative AI in their assignments. But this may become increasingly difficult to monitor or enforce if the digital resources and learning management systems that are available to students on campus now have elements of AI already embedded in them.
What may have worked 2 years ago in terms of putting out a blanket policy statement in your course syllabus about AI usage isn’t likely to be as effective now.
There is so much to reflect on with respect to the emergence of AI technology and its uses (e.g., positive, negative, ethical, unethical, and inevitable) in higher education. I’d like to devote a future episode to thinking through your values in relation to AI and your pedagogy.
But in the meantime, I do think that many of the suggestions from last year’s episode on syllabus planning still hold up. So, I’m going to replay that, but I also do encourage you to consider in what ways you may have to revise, modify, or reconceptualize your syllabus and course planning due to the integration of AI on your campus and in society in general.
So here it is:
If you’re a professor in North America, the month of August usually signals the last few precious weeks of your summer break. You might be deciding to buckle down on finishing your writing projects or deciding to take a last-minute vacation. Or both! You know that once the academic year starts, you won’t have these large blocks of time, so you want to take advantage of what time remains.
If you’ve been teaching for a while, then planning new course syllabi may be a cinch for you. You can take your previous syllabi and tweak them for the new semester. You can put this off until a few days before school starts.
What’s Entailed in Course Syllabus Preparation?
But if this is your very first time teaching as a professor, then preparing your course syllabi is probably more of an involved process for you. And one that produces a lot of anxiety. If you didn’t receive any training in graduate school on how to construct effective syllabi and teach your own courses, then this can feel like a big leveling up process for you.
When I was a PhD student, I only served as a teaching assistant and a head teaching fellow. I had the chance to create my own syllabi for my discussion sections, but I was never the instructor of record for my own course in graduate school.
So I had to upskill quickly during my first year on the tenure track.
In the preparation for developing my first courses and course syllabi, I did what I imagine many new faculty do in my situation:
-I asked my senior colleagues for previous syllabi for the core courses that I inherited.
-I asked my academic peers for sample syllabi to draw ideas and inspiration from.
-I skimmed through readings that I thought would be effective and interesting for undergraduate courses and also for graduate seminars.
-Started to conceptualize the arch of each course, the course goals, and learning outcomes.
-Decided on what assignments, readings, and final assessments I would have.
-Decided on what kind of course policies and institutional resources I needed to include in the syllabus document.
So I drafted syllabi for several courses that eventually became a template for what I would use in later years.
Additionally, being a music department faculty member, I also selected and digitized music examples that needed to be integrated and uploaded into the Learning Management System (LMS), which was connected to the course syllabus.
And lastly, I also contacted and arranged for guest musicians to come to some of my courses. So I also had to learn how to apply for honoraria and funding in my new institution.
These days, one could probably add the following to this course prep stage:
-Use social media to crowdsource possible readings and ideas for a new course
-Peruse related syllabi that are online or on a website such as Open Syllabus
-Utilize AI to generate a list of readings related to your course
Now that’s a lot that goes into conceptualizing, planning, and developing a good course syllabus! If you’re teaching several courses this coming academic year, syllabus planning can entail a lot of time and work.
The Syllabus: “One of the Few Formal Tangible Links Between You and Your Students“
I want to read a short description for you about the course syllabus. This comes from an essay that’s on the website of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan. I’m going to go ahead and link to this essay by Jennifer Sinor and Matt Kaplan in the written transcript, as there are other practical suggestions for what goes into constructing a good syllabus.
Here’s the opening paragraph:
The syllabus—what students eagerly await on the first day; a record of the class; one of the only artifacts to remain after the students move on. Your syllabus represents both an end and a beginning—a final product of your course planning and a valuable way to introduce yourself and the course to your students. Because your syllabus is one of the few formal, tangible links between you and your students and because it will be referred to throughout the semester, time and energy should be spent on constructing your syllabus. Research indicates that outstanding instruction and a detailed syllabus are directly related (Grunert, 1997). Students will appreciate and respond positively to a syllabus that bears the marks of being well planned.
Later on in the essay, there’s also a section on establishing tone in your syllabus. You want to set the right tone for what kind of professor you’ll be and set clear expectations for your students. You also want to establish your course policies about participation, attendance, grading, academic integrity, and any accommodations.
But what does tone mean exactly? And how do you capture the right tone for you and your teaching style in your syllabus?
I wonder if women of color faculty have an added challenge when creating their syllabi for the first time. Since many women of color faculty are often not viewed as authority figures in the classroom, the syllabus serves as a textual validation of your authority as a professor.
Moreover, the syllabus gives you an opportunity to document your course policies clearly. If students are unsure about grading expectations or there are grading disputes in the future, you can refer to them back to your syllabus. It’s almost like you’re building in pre-emptive defensive measures into this one document. But at the same time, some of you also want to extend compassion to your students and communicate that you’re creating space for feedback and engagement. This is a fine balance to strike in one document.
I think this concept of tone is really quite interesting, especially when thinking about this from the perspective of women of color faculty. And it really does merit further discussion.
But in the meantime, I would like to offer 6 tips for those of you who are new to teaching and who are currently preparing course syllabi for the first time this summer and maybe stressing out a little bit.
Here are 6 Tips for Preparing Course Syllabi for New Faculty
1) Think of the syllabus in terms of a puzzle that you’re putting together. Some parts will be easier to fill in than others. Know that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for certain sections like your institution’s academic integrity policy. You can reuse these sections in future syllabi.
2) When you have a syllabus draft, ask a trusted colleague to look it over for you. There may be some language that you might want to include that is specific to your institution. Or you may receive some suggestions from a senior colleague that would be important for the teaching portion of your tenure evaluation down the road.
3) Build in some flexibility into your syllabus. You can do this with a simple sentence saying that certain aspects of the schedule may be subject to change, and that all revisions to the syllabus will be announced in class and online. We’ve learned during the pandemic that there are some circumstances that are just beyond our control. School closures, campus protests, sudden top-down requests to shift to remote instruction, and who knows what else is coming our way … all of these things can impact your ability to deliver your course effectively. So make sure to allow for some flexibility in your syllabus.
4) If you have a discussion-based course, I’ve found it very rewarding and interesting to have students decide on a topic for discussion towards the end of the semester. You can take a class poll when it comes closer to the time but just list it as TBD (to be determined) in the syllabus for that week. I’ve had some of the most engaging and fascinating class discussions when I’ve allowed students to decide on a topic for reflection.
5) For graduate seminars, I usually scheduled one workshop session in the middle of the course just for syllabus design. This was to give graduate students the opportunity to conceptualize and design their own syllabus and discuss their process with their peers. Then they’d come away with a great first draft of a syllabus that they tailored themselves—that they could incorporate into their teaching portfolio if they chose to go on the academic job market.
6) Keep in mind that if you’ve never gone through the process of creating your own course syllabi, that you are learning, too. There is a learning curve to this. Adopt a growth mindset and know that you’ll develop your own tone and style in good time. Give it your best shot this first time around, but try to resist the temptation to spend countless hours working on your first set of syllabi.
So I hope that some of these tips resonate with you and can alleviate some stress with this first-time activity. Also feel free to check out my previous podcast episodes 3 and 14, where I discuss How to Manage Your First Semester as a Woman of Color Faculty on the Tenure Track and Teaching Graduate Seminars for Your First Time.
If you’ve been teaching for a long time and you have additional suggestions on what has helped you with syllabus prep over the years, please reach out to me. I would love to hear from you and add these suggestions, resources, and wisdom to the written transcript for this episode.
And lastly, if you know somebody who is just starting out their journey as a new professor, please feel free to share this episode with them.