The deadline to order textbooks for spring is October 16. It’s tough to think ahead to next semester when it’s barely midterm, but the best time to reflect on your goals for your students is before you choose a text.
All too often, we let a textbook or list of readings determine the content or structure of a course. And why not?
It’s hard to believe that classes began five weeks ago, but somehow midterm is already on the horizon, and the deadline to drop a class is coming up in two weeks (on October 13). By this point in the semester, both you and your students need some feedback on their learning.
Irma mostly spared our trees, but battered the fall calendar, so we’re all scrambling to figure out how to make up lost contact hours. When you’re reassessing your fall syllabus to determine what you might trim or shift, it will be helpful to review or refine your learning goals for the course.
If someone were to peek into your classroom during a typical class session, what would they see? Research suggests (and experience confirms) that they’d see most of us standing at the front of the room doing all the work—writing on the board, describing, explaining, solving problems–and students sitting quietly, taking notes.
