There are only so many weeks in a semester. There is also a certain amount of material that must be covered, assignments that must be set, and marking deadlines that each course must meet. So, there will inevitably be a few heavier weeks from the instructor’s perspective, just like there will inevitably be some heavier parts of the semester for students. Some of these are likely to occur near the end of the course once most of the material is on the table. This is how so many of us end up with an overwhelming end of semester push, or an impossible week of marking and covering new material, or too short a marking turnaround time.
Sometimes, in calculating how to manage and spread out such weeks, it can be tempting to compartmentalize our teaching responsibilities as though we were not also people with lives outside of the classroom. It can be equally tempting to assume the same of our students: that ours is their only class, that their only responsibilities are as students, or even that their priorities are course-related.
None of these assumptions is fair, either to ourselves or to our students.
So, one purpose of this post is to serve as a reminder at the course design stage that we all have obligations, responsibilities, deadlines, and expectations beyond any given course. And part of the purpose of this post is to serve as a reminder that we cannot predict the future, nor know every obstacle and emergency that will arise in a given semester. And if all I convince you to do is acknowledge these facts as part of your instructional design process, then this post will have been useful.
But if you want some advice on how to take account of these features, then read on to learn a bit more about how to reverse engineer your syllabus to hopefully meet more of your own needs as a complete person, and more of your students’ needs as people with lives outside of your class. Partly, this is an exercise in brainstorming about foreseeable conflicts in an attempt to better prepare for them.
Start with the most mechanical, most fixed features of the course itself: class meetings and times, university holidays, grade submission deadlines. You may wish to use a syllabus date generator such as this one: http://wcaleb.rice.edu/syllabusmaker/generic/
Next, add personal dates and appointments. I put these next because you are the only one who can account for these. Your birthday. Important family events (cousin’s wedding? Spouse’s birthday? Parent’s anniversary?) Concert tickets. Grant deadlines. Medical appointments. Conference dates. Travel dates. Daycare pick up. Vet appointments. Note which of these are absolutely fixed, and which are more flexible. After all, you have a life outside of the classroom, and you are best placed to know what that entails.
Third, add department, professional, college obligations and dates. You likely have less control over these, and potentially less prior warning about them, but they are worth trying to account for even if only roughly. Is there an open house that you’ll be expected to attend? Are there set department meeting times on Tuesday afternoons? Internal scholarship deadlines when students will be asking for reference letters? If you are not starting a new job, you may be in a position to anticipate an approximate pace and time commitment. But even in a new position, some preliminary approximation should be possible, and some fixed expectations should be available. These are reasonable questions to ask.
After these 3 steps, you might be able to recognize some weeks that are already heavy and stressful, prior to your scheduling any course materials or deadlines. Try to flag these. If nothing else, it is useful to be able to anticipate when an intensive week is coming. But ideally, you might be able to schedule some easier teaching weeks to coincide with these heavier commitments weeks, or at least avoid scheduling your heaviest teaching weeks to coincide with already heavy weeks.
Now, start to draft readings and assignments, but do so by working backwards. When is your marking deadline? How many days or weeks will you need to mark and provide feedback for a given class size or assessment style? How many classes of new material between assignments or tests? How many days or weeks between returning assignments with feedback and starting the next assignment? In each cycle of new material, assessment, and providing feedback, try to schedule some wiggle room in case something comes up.
On your already flagged heavy weeks, consider scheduling a film viewing or a review session if it’s pedagogically appropriate. Schedule material that you are very comfortable with. Do not schedule your midterm with a 3-day marking turnaround on the week of your parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, nor in the same week as that completely new material.
At this stage, you may have a preliminary outline of the course and a good preliminary idea of how the pacing will work for you. Highlight the heavy weeks and post reminders in your calendar or other system of organization.
I advise at this stage that you spend a little time thinking through these same issues from a student perspective, which has the added bonus of continuing the project of managing your own pacing and workload. Admittedly, I spend less time on this, but I want to notice ahead of time if I am assigning the two longest and densest readings in the course back to back, or if one week is both a heavy reading week and a heavy assessment week.
Part of my process is to add a ‘number of pages’ column to the reading list for the course. Obviously, page count is not the only relevant indicator, but it is a tangible metric that students can use to anticipate heavier and (somewhat) lighter weeks. Again, I try to pace the heavy weeks, and sometimes draw out a longer reading over two classes, or replace an excessively long reading with shorter pieces. Making this information available in the syllabus will help students to do the same sort of semester planning.