EXERCISE: QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER WHEN DRAFTING A REFLECTION

The syllabus presents your course. Provide a brief rationale for the decisions you have made for your course. Consider the following topics:

1. 
   Who are your students? Are they first-year? Seniors? Majors/non-majors? Working professionals? Describe how your syllabus is designed to communicate to these students and how it both challenges and offers support for their learning.
   

2. 
   How have you planned or revised the course to prepare students to fulfill the course learning objectives? (Approximately 4-6 learning goals or objectives should be explicitly stated on your syllabus.) What instructional techniques do you plan to use in class? What kinds of learning do you expect to take place out of class?
   

3. 
   Briefly discuss the sequence of topics and assignments in your course. What were your goals for these assignments? Were they reached? Why or why not? How would you change them in the future? Hint: when formulating learning goals, consider Fink’s five principles of course design. A CTE newsletter article from Spring 2002 (.pdf) describes these five principles.
   

4. 
   Give a rationale for your grading scale and assessment techniques. How do these fit into your course objectives?
   

Many TAs have never designed their own syllabus. Here are some other options:

• 
  Create a syllabus for a course you are likely to be teaching.
  
• 
  Present a syllabus you have used (but not created) and discuss how you implemented it in your particular section of the course.
  
• 
  Present a syllabus you have adapted from a previous course instructor and point out the revisions you made and why.
  
• 
  Always give credit where credit is due.