Questions tagged [syllabus]
Questions in relation to syllabus which is an outline or summary of the subjects of a course of lectures or the contents of a curriculum.
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Dealing with entitled students
I am a new adjunct professor at a US university teaching calculus. I had a student complain during my first lecture and tell me that the order in which I was covering the material was wrong and that ...
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Does a course abstract have to correspond directly to the required readings/bibliography of the course?
This might be a bit of a strange question, but here goes:
I am proposing my own course for the first time and am currently working on the course abstract (meaning the summary of the course that'll go ...
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Where to get old syllabi of courses taught by famous professors?
It would be interesting to have a look at syllabus of courses taught by well-known professors in my field. Broadly speaking, is there a repository of syllabi of older professors (in any field)? Say, ...
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Best day of the week to hold an exam?
I'm a course instructor and was finalizing my syllabus when I hit a bit of a wall and would love to hear the community's input. If you're teaching a class that meets twice per week, do you prefer to ...
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What's the best way to ask a professor for their syllabus before the term starts? [duplicate]
"I am taking your course in Spring 2021. Is it possible for you to send the syllabus if there is one ready?"
Is the wording okay?
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Professor deviating from the syllabus mentioned apriori
I am currently taking a graduate course which is a combination of two subjects and we have two faculty teaching it - call them A and B - one for each subject. Before my classes started, we had an ...
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Can I take two consecutive classes simultaneously? [closed]
For example, I would like to take Intermediate Spanish I AND Intermediate Spanish II at the same time.
Can colleges, in general, allow that? If my advisor says to me that they think it cannot be done, ...
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Dealing with syllabus error as instructor
I hope it will be forgiven that I am going the anonymous-coward route when asking this question.
I am teaching two courses this semester. My university has been mandating lots of evolving changes to ...
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Is it inappropriate to ask department staff for syllabi previously used for courses I am to teach in upcoming year?
I've been hired to teach two courses as an adjunct professor in the US (my first time teaching). I would like to review syllabi previously used for these courses, simply to inform my thinking on these ...
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Is asking for the syllabus as a student before class starts frowned upon?
Is asking for the syllabus before class frowned upon?
I usually ask because I'm trying to figure out what we're going to do and whether I have interest in the subject.
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What do you use for curriculum mapping?
I need something like MIT project called Crosslinks: http://crosslinks.mit.edu/
But since it doesn't work properly neither out of the box on my laptop nor on their own site, I need somethings like ...
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How much time does a university typically give a professor to draft a syllabus and how long before they are approved? [closed]
I was wondering about the process of accepting a syllabus, and if it was different for the Humanities and in the Sciences. Suppose, just so the question is less abstract, there is a new software ...
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My Anatomy and Physiology professor is charging for the outline [duplicate]
My class already requires two books for the lecture and one for the lab. Is it actually legal to charge $15 for the course outline, written by the professor and published by the community college. I ...
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Assessing a penalty for inquiries regarding exceptions to deadline policy
My problem: Though it's made explicitly clear to my students that I do not accept late work and do not grant extensions, I get at least 5-10 e-mails a week asking about extensions. I want to deter ...
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Is my approach to discouraging whiners from taking my class acceptable?
I am writing a syllabus for a Calculus for Business class. When I taught the last year, I had some very weak but vocal students whine that the tests were tough (despite other students doing fine), the ...
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Associate Deans' power [closed]
If a student complains to the associate dean about an adjunct faculty member, does the dean have the power to intervene? In this case, the student is complaining because the faculty member won't ...
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Grading criteria changed mid-semester. Not fully communicated. What can I do?
I'm in my final year of my bachelor degree (Netherlands). In fact, I am resitting this particular class since I did not submit the portfolio last time. I have agreed to start writing my thesis today ...
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Can a professor alter the syllabus when calculating a final course grade?
A professor for my one course didn't calculate an attendance and participation grade into my final grade but it was worth 20 percent in the syllabus.
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Correcting professors' lecture notes
One of my profs in college has (after years of students asking him to do so) put forth a syllabus with all the material for the class he is teaching.
With the help of 3 students from previous years (...
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Am I obliged to answer student queries that can readily be answered by reading the syllabus? [closed]
I maintain an email group for my class where the reading list and other course materials are made available to the students. Despite sharing all relevant information with them, I still have students ...
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Teaching Robotics to Mechanical Engineering Students Vs Electrical Engineering Students
My background is in electrical engineering. I have taught robotics to electrical, electronics and CS students. This time I have to teach robotics to mechanical engineering students. How do I keep the ...
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In teaching, what do we actually mean when we say "syllabus completed"?
In my university, every faculty member has to submit a handout at the semester beginning for his(her) course. The handout is basically a list of topics (a syllabus) that needs to be taught to the (to ...
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Syllabus change with no warning nor discussion with students worsened grade
In one of my courses, our syllabus outlined the course material and its contribution to our total grade. Daily homework constituted 10% of the grade, with other major group assignments constituting ...
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Is it legal or normal for a professor to require 65 or above on both assessments to pass the unit? [closed]
Our grades for the Coding class I am taking are divided between projects and exams. The professor I take the class under has the following policy on her syllabus:
If our cumulative average for ...
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Quote on testing, checking, and verification [closed]
I'm in the habit of putting a motivating quote on the top of each of my syllabi. For my introductory programming course, I'd like to focus the class on the theme of testing and verification. Of course,...
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Any recourse for testing on material not mentioned in the class syllabus? [closed]
In one particular university class, many people stopped attending after about half the semester was over as the professor was "confusing" as many people phrased it and opted to instead study from the ...
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Providing syllabi far in advance
A student from another university is planning on taking a class I'll be teaching this fall and will be doing it as a transient student. Apparently, in order to have their transient status approved, ...
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Eliminating ambiguity in a grading policy
In a particular course, there will be one final exam and an online activity.
Say the final exam is worth 50 points and the online activity is worth 5 points.
Based on the following statement, how ...
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Can a syllabus be adopted and modified?
I have seen some few syllabuses online that look very similar. Is it fine to adopt any syllabus or instructors need to have their own syllabus? And do instructors need to get permission from the ...
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When should I release deadlines for assignments?
Some students have been asking that I release all the assignments and their due dates at the beginning of the course. I suppose that I could create some estimates, but I suspect that we will end up ...
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Is it appropriate for employers recruiting students to ask professors for syllabi of their classes?
Since graduating I have maintained contact with a number of professors at my university and have gone back on recruiting trips. I check in on the courses being offered from time to time and have ...
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Disclaimer in syllabus, a good or bad idea for instructor and students?
I have seen couple of syllabi that used a disclaimer similar to "Instructor reserves the right to change the syllabus at any time". For the instructor side, it could be good, but from students side it ...
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Bonus Quizzes to entice students to read their syllabus?
As I'm sure many lecturers/professors would attest, one of the frustrations of teaching can be the continuous asking of questions that had a student read their syllabus and/or navigated the online ...
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Examples of a large-scale physics syllabus review
My Department – Physics – is preparing to modernise its entire syllabus at all levels, from undergraduate through to graduate courses. We are looking at what material should be taught, as well as ...
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Is the prestige of a university correlated with how rigorous its undergraduate courses are?
How much harder is it to get an undergraduate degree (say, in computer science) at a highly competitive university compared to a less rigorous institution?
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How to acknowledge a colleague's authorship of text in a syllabus
Here is a situation that I have been in several times, but have only recently begun to give careful thought to. Suppose you are asked to teach a course that you have not taught before. A fairly ...
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How can I politely explain to my students that the texts in my course are all in English and it is their duty to read it nonetheless?
Eventually I grew tired of having to explain over and over why all my class material is in English. It's a mandatory course in Art History. I want to put some warning in my syllabus to minimize any ...
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If co-instructors gave different syllabi with different grading schemes, is this generally considered a valid reason to challenge grade?
Summary: I am a STEM graduate student taking a soon-ending class that was divided into 3 parts each under different professors, Alice, Bob and Carol.
There is a conflict in the grading schemes set ...
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How to know when you should change what is taught during a lab classes
I teach a lab class that is only constrained by some broad learning objectives. I have been using the same project now for 5 years. It now runs very smoothly and I know what difficulties the students ...
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Is "read the syllabus" a sufficient transfer of responsibility?
In my experience, most instructors spend a large portion of the first period in a term talking about the syllabus. This seems to serve to pass responsibility onto students:
Students see the deadlines....
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Children in the Classroom
As a new semester of school approaches I have begun updating my syllabi for the classes I teach. I have lately used a clause in the syllabus about no children in the classroom as I feel it is a ...
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Do I need to define all forms of cheating in the syllabus?
Every year, students seem to find new ways to "cheat" on the work. Every year, my course policies section grows longer and longer (a full page now) to match the newfound methods. I list all forms of ...
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How can I change the assignments in the syllabus in a way that is fair to the students?
In my syllabus there is series of writing assignments that are worth 10% of the final grade. Over the course of the semester there were supposed to be 4 assignments, however as a result of snow days ...
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Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student or it is better to have it on my course's website?
This is a question that has plagued me for a couple of years now. Is it worth it to print a copy of the syllabus for each student? Or, is posting it on my course website good enough? My syllabus ...
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How does calibrating syllabus based on the requirements of the industry happen?
Often the industry finds that students graduating from a particular department do not possess the skill-set required to perform well in their company. While research can at least afford to be outside ...
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