Search Results for: blog ownership and the syllabus

The Syllabus Minimum

Another warning for students as we head full-steam into the end of another semester. Today I’m going to talk about easy ways to embarrass yourself. No, this has nothing to do with that bar and that song at the end of the night and that tradition and the prevalence of cell phone cameras. No, it doesn’t have anything to do with your roommate. It doesn’t even have anything to do with that awkward conversation you tried to have with your lab partner in that required science class. This is about something I’m going to call the “syllabus minimum.” What is … Continue reading →

Read the Syllabus

Since I’m not a troubled instructor this semester (and I’ve taken the role of a dutiful TA) I am being re-introduced to the simultaneous joy and terror of a large, introductory course. It is at this point that I feel I must return to one of my favorite sayings: read the syllabus. The reason for this decree is because of the overwhelming amount of email I’ve been receiving recently. “How do I…” “Can you tell me…” “Do you know if…” etc. These types of questions are smothering my inbox during these first weeks and it is an unfortunate reality that … Continue reading →

Ownership and The Syllabus

There are major changes going on in education lately. I’m hearing it from all corners of the spectrum: students, professors, administrators and the internet at large. The issue is the concept of ownership. In particular is the issue of ownership of ideas. I’ve titled this post “Ownership and The Syllabus” because I was recently reminded of this issue when another instructor made a comment about some of the initiatives happening at many universities. The issue at hand was the syllabus and its status as a public/open rather than private/restricted-access document. Housed within this comment are some overarching principles and frustrations … Continue reading →

Digital Copies – Digital Syllabus

Sometimes my students just don’t know how lucky they are. The reason for their luck came as a surprise to me because it was one of those functional things that I simply overlooked while actually planning my own course. It makes sense, from a distribution standpoint, that in a class with over four hundred people you would distribute course materials in a digital format. It’s faster, harder to lose, and wastes significantly fewer trees in the process. What’s not to like? Apparently there is a lot not to like and I’m quite certain that I’ve experienced this dilemma with some … Continue reading →

Why Giving Makes Sense

This is going to be a post about teaching and about sharing. It’s a post about sharing because sharing is giving and giving makes sense. If you think about teachers and education you’ll realize that education itself is based on the idea of sharing. I’ve talked about apprenticeship before and that is based on the same thing: sharing. Sharing happens to be the only way we have for teaching and learning. Someone has to share that knowledge with you. Since human beings are not telepathic we don’t have the ability to steal other people’s thoughts in any direct way. We’re … Continue reading →

Sharing Knowledge

In my previous post I talked about a growing concern among academics about the use of their “intellectual property” by other individuals (including, sometimes, their own students) in the halls and forums of universities. These are understandable concerns. In some ways the fear is that someone else could take your syllabus (full of hard work and sweat and tears) and go off and teach it themselves without crediting (or otherwise giving monetary or other value) to the original creator, you. There are a number of problems that I identify with this line of thinking that I’ll get to in a … Continue reading →