As you’re planning your course, please make sure that you first review the First-Year Writing Program’s Course Policies and Syllabus Requirements. You can find those in the First-Year Writing Program Faculty Handbook.
This blank course design document might be a great place to start, because it will help you break down your planning by module/major assignment and consider which instructional materials and activities as well as assessments and major writing assignments.
In addition to this handout, here’s another checklist you can use to evaluate and check your course’s readiness before opening it to students.
This checklist would be helpful for usability testing with peers or colleagues prior to the start of the semester!
You can also read this handout of lessons learned from the original pilot sections of ENG 101 online, taught by Gwendolynne Reid and Susan Miller-Cochran.
Finally, it can be helpful to visualize your course through these steps:
- Review the university’s Academic Calendar & Exam Schedule. Use these as you determine your own course calendar and meeting schedule. Note the course add/drop dates. (Tip: Count the # of meetings and think about the amount of time you’ll have in each unit/section of the course.
- Determine the number of assignments you’re going to use (4 minimum assignments are required for ENG 101 and must count for at least 80% of the total grade. The Comparative Rhetorical Analysis is required in online sections of both ENG 101 and ENG 105.
- Review the course objectives
- Determine the frame for your course (disciplinary conventions, research, theme-based course?)
- Make sure you review the program-wide and course-specific policies.
- Schedule at least 1 diagnostic assignment (ungraded, take-home assignment) early in your calendar. Review these early so that students can be moved to different courses, if needed.
- Consider how you’re going to establish a rhetorical framework at the beginning of the course (which has implications for scheduling the rest of your units).
- Make decisions about your approach to process work within your course (homework, quizzes, reflections, drafts, conferences, peer responses, etc.)