I am going into my third week of teaching on Monday (though Labor Day holiday meant there was no class in the second week). One thing I have learned through this process is that the syllabus is never done.

I spent hours working on the syllabus prior to school starting. I went through scenarios in my head to think about what to do for each class and how to order things in a way that made sense. The course has required assignments that I had to figure out how to best order and structure across the 16 weeks.

And yet I found myself all last week tweaking things in the syllabus. Some of the changes I made were:

Changing the extra credit opportunities . The ones I had developed were more applicable to students interested in research-oriented careers. Nearly all of the students in my class want to be teachers after they graduate and so I revised the opportunities to reflect the knowledge and skills needed for teaching rather than researching.



. The ones I had developed were more applicable to students interested in research-oriented careers. Nearly all of the students in my class want to be teachers after they graduate and so I revised the opportunities to reflect the knowledge and skills needed for teaching rather than researching. Revising the activities . Only one of the three major assignments in the communications course I am teaching deals with oral communication, yet this is the area that more than half of my students admitted being most weak in. I had originally planned on only dedicating a couple weeks to oral communication but this knowledge led me to incorporate oral communication practice in class every week leading up to their oral presentations. Also, one of the extra credit opportunities is another oral presentation.

. Only one of the three major assignments in the communications course I am teaching deals with oral communication, yet this is the area that more than half of my students admitted being most weak in. I had originally planned on only dedicating a couple weeks to oral communication but this knowledge led me to incorporate oral communication practice in class every week leading up to their oral presentations. Also, one of the extra credit opportunities is another oral presentation. Dropping some lecture topics. I severely over-estimated how much I could get done in a single lecture. Especially once I added the oral communication practice weekly, I was very much strapped for time within each class. Furthermore, the department required an hour of my nearly 3 hour class to be dedicated to advisement at some point throughout the semester. So I found myself, when I sat down and developed my slides, not having enough time to do everything I had planned. Fortunately, I also budgeted a lot of “TBD” activities and lectures later in the semester, so I can move things to there if I deem them worthy enough of being kept in.



I can imagine that more experienced teachers–both overall and for specific courses–have fewer issues in this area. I am sure being new to teaching, and to teaching this course specifically, that it’s just a big learning curve. Next time I teach this course, I would probably have less development I would do both prior to the semester and throughout the semester. Furthermore, I have been collecting notes on what I would improve for next semester to save me time in revising the syllabus and course schedule.

Are there any suggestions my fellow teachers have in syllabus development? Is there anything I could have done better to anticipate the flexibility needed to adapt the class to my students?