The 'A' Word ... Assessment

I found this post by Christopher Vilmar - "Exams & Regrets" - via The Long Eighteenth. It does perfectly capture the angst of grading. How sad to see all those weeks of work turned into a series of (often) poorly written rehashings of what we had been discussing, often with much greater sensitivity and sophistication. And thank goodness, as he notes, for the essays that do reflect real, independent thinking. Christopher opposes grading and syllabus writing, but I find it a challenge that they happen at virtually the same time, at least between Fall and Spring Semester. (Starting back up after a long summer break is a different post.)

What I always find myself spiraling back to is assessment (and it's not just because my campus is currently obsessed with it): to test or not to test? Should students just do projects and write papers and essays? Or do they need tests? Do I?

When I am grading, particularly at finals, these are the questions that chase each other around in my head. And they pursue me as I construct the next set of syllabi. Some semesters I include exams; others, just projects and assignments. I have not been happy with either result. What should I do next semester? Still working that one out.

Thanks to Christopher Villmar and Dave Mazella for leading me to my questions.

Go the Course

I have been thinking about the way that a syllabus sets up a course. Is a syllabus a blueprint? Are they are plans which help us structure the work we will do? First, we grapple with x skill or concept and, once we can perform the skill or articulate the concept, we move on to the next set. First floor, second floor, and so on. But a course does not, it seems to me, follow a necessarily strict plan. With a building, the stairs really do need to start in one place to end up in another. I am not so sure that that is the case with a course or a syllabus. In fact, that is something I am trying to move away from.

Another metaphor for a syllabus is that it is a map. It signposts the directions we will travel over the semester, so to speak. A syllabus is not a set of directions - go straight, then turn left - but provides information that allows one to follow an alternate route but still end up in the intended destination. This seems like a desirable characteristic. One group of students (and profs, I suppose) could best take Route A, but another will learn better via Route B. If we extend the map metaphor, however, a syllabus cannot contain all the possible routes, which I think is not possible in a classroom.

So, a better metaphor for a syllabus is ... ? I'm not sure - a floor plan (flexible, but with certain fixed boundaries), a palette (the more you work on it, the messier it gets), a Jenga game (build the structure and remove pieces without causing it to collapse) ...

I am trying to decide how I want my syllabus to function, in part because this is my primary planning tool and in part because I have never been fond of that other metaphor that is used a lot: the contract.

"The Syllabus Becomes a Repository of Legalese," The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 14, 2008)
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i27/27a00102.htm

syllabus

I looked up 'syllabus' in the Oxford Reference Online and the definitions offered were interesting in light of my current planning:

1. the subjects in a course of study or teaching: there isn't time to cover the syllabus | the history syllabus.

2. (in the Roman Catholic Church) a summary of points decided by papal decree regarding heretical doctrines or practices.
- ORIGIN mid 17th cent. (in the sense 'concise table of headings of a discourse'): modern Latin, originally a misreading of Latin sittybas, accusative plural of sittyba, from Greek sittuba 'title slip, label'.

I love these two definitions. The first one is curious not for the definition, but for the example - "there isn't enough time." I often have this problem. I develop an ambitious, but I think not totally unreasonable plan for the semester and - voila - we have weather closures, or I get sick, or the group gets exhausted, so I have to dramatically modify or chuck out chunks of my syllabus. And there is the worry side - what if I don't plan enough and we spend the last two weeks staring at each other??

This semester my goal for my revised course is to just choose the interesting readings and leave gaps for development - class discussion, in-class projects, whatever. I am working on finding to the right amount of work - interesting, serious, fun, educationally useful.

For my new course, rather than planning everything out as a tightly organized puzzle from which no pieces can be removed, etc (I have been known to do this), my goal is to be comfortable with a little more openness and a little less planning. But my real innovation (for my teaching anyway), is to be open about this. I am going to say to the students, 'hey I haven't taught this before, I'm not sure where we're going with this, but let's try it and see what happens.' I will have a syllabus and a plan, just not one that is set in stone. I don't want to say at the end of the semester, "there isn't time to cover the syllabus."

The second definition is also fun: "a summary of points decided by papal decree regarding heretical doctrines or practices." Right. So a syllabus is a summary of ideas and practices that fall outside the range of the acceptable for a powerful institution. Hmm. Ok, syllabus it is. Should be fun. Of course, I would like to avoid the doctrinaire quality implied by this. Taking this more seriously, I tend to teach a version of art history that is politically interested, so I like students to think outside about what is and isn't heretical, whatever institutions we are investigating.

Start from the End

Since this is the end of one academic semester and I am deep in the throes (and have been for a few weeks now) with planning for the next one, I thought this would be a good opportunity for another beginning: blogging.

I have been worrying, thinking, counting (number of course meetings, number of pages), etc., my way to two syllabi but I haven't actually gotten very far. Sure, I've done some reading, but this hasn't struck me as the most effective preparation. Not only will I have to read it all over again, but I also read from a very different perspective than my students. Frankly for me, course planning seems mostly like a period of hemming and hawing followed by some hasty choices made just in time to get the syllabus printed up. (And yes, I still hand out a paper syllabus.)

I thought I would see if anyone would like to chime in with their suggestions for course planning. How do others either revise existing courses or develop new ones? I have to do both for the upcoming semester.