The summer officially ends tomorrow for me. Monday is the first day of classes for the fall semester. I finished my syllabus for my finance class on Tuesday, but I've been wrestling with my management class syllabus for two days and I just can't find the right combination of topics, assignments, and grade weights. Getting the right mix is much harder than it seems when you are a student.
First you wrestle with what you want the students to come away with from your class. This is a difficult starting point for me because my answer is "everything they need to know to be successful." Unfortunately, that's just not possible in one class. And yet I keep trying.
Once you have a sense of the take aways, you have to look at content. What book, articles, web sites, etc. will provide the base material you want your students to interact with before or after class? Here's a secret - you won't have time for all of it no matter what.
Then you think about the deliverables that will help create the learning experience the students need to achieve the take aways. Inevitably, the best deliverables are massive drains on your time and energy (i.e, papers). No one likes to write papers for class. I guaranty you, your teacher likes them even less. Correcting a massive pile of papers is like drinking sand. With a side of fire ants. The multiple choice exam is a complete cop-out. But with large classes, that's about all you can do.
The flip side is, if you assign too much work, students moderate their effort and hand in mediocre products. If you don't assign enough work, they don't learn anything. If you don't assign the right work, they learn that you are a jerk and don't know what you are doing.
It's a complex puzzle to solve, especially with a squishy class like "management". I was stunned to find out I will have 50+ students in my class this semester - about 25% more than last year. Great for the Registrar, terrible for me. You can't have a good discussion with more than about 20 in a class, preferably less. So now I have to think about exercises and activities and assignments that I can do for 50+. Right away that kills any serious use of class time for presentations, a key management skill. It makes me weigh how much writing I can assign, because every paper I assign means I have to multiply that by 50 for grading. Three to five page paper? 150-250 pages of reading - a medium length novel. And I can't just relax and read it - I have to mark up and judge every page's quality. Class size is a game changer.
Nevertheless, I've committed to having the students blog. They will be writing one post a week - which means I will be reading 50 posts a week on top of class prep and any other assignments. I am excited about this assignment, despite the volume, because I've recruited a huge (30+) team of healthcare leaders to read the posts along with me. They will have three students each to follow and they have agreed to comment on the posts, which I think is awesome.
The other parts of the class I am still not sure about. I believe I am going to have them create an open educational resource (OER) book about health management and put it into the creative commons, based on my experience last semester. But how to keep them engaged with the actual class work? That is the question. Multiple choice reading exams? More written homework?
I'm going to use the Army's MDMP process to teach them formal decision making. And then I think I am going to have them produce decision briefs, but probably just hand in the PPTs, not brief them, because I have 50+ students and that is not physically possible without sacrificing half the class meetings to boring briefings.
I am working on killing the disposable assignment, but I am not there yet. Sigh.
First you wrestle with what you want the students to come away with from your class. This is a difficult starting point for me because my answer is "everything they need to know to be successful." Unfortunately, that's just not possible in one class. And yet I keep trying.
Once you have a sense of the take aways, you have to look at content. What book, articles, web sites, etc. will provide the base material you want your students to interact with before or after class? Here's a secret - you won't have time for all of it no matter what.
Then you think about the deliverables that will help create the learning experience the students need to achieve the take aways. Inevitably, the best deliverables are massive drains on your time and energy (i.e, papers). No one likes to write papers for class. I guaranty you, your teacher likes them even less. Correcting a massive pile of papers is like drinking sand. With a side of fire ants. The multiple choice exam is a complete cop-out. But with large classes, that's about all you can do.
The flip side is, if you assign too much work, students moderate their effort and hand in mediocre products. If you don't assign enough work, they don't learn anything. If you don't assign the right work, they learn that you are a jerk and don't know what you are doing.
It's a complex puzzle to solve, especially with a squishy class like "management". I was stunned to find out I will have 50+ students in my class this semester - about 25% more than last year. Great for the Registrar, terrible for me. You can't have a good discussion with more than about 20 in a class, preferably less. So now I have to think about exercises and activities and assignments that I can do for 50+. Right away that kills any serious use of class time for presentations, a key management skill. It makes me weigh how much writing I can assign, because every paper I assign means I have to multiply that by 50 for grading. Three to five page paper? 150-250 pages of reading - a medium length novel. And I can't just relax and read it - I have to mark up and judge every page's quality. Class size is a game changer.
Nevertheless, I've committed to having the students blog. They will be writing one post a week - which means I will be reading 50 posts a week on top of class prep and any other assignments. I am excited about this assignment, despite the volume, because I've recruited a huge (30+) team of healthcare leaders to read the posts along with me. They will have three students each to follow and they have agreed to comment on the posts, which I think is awesome.
The other parts of the class I am still not sure about. I believe I am going to have them create an open educational resource (OER) book about health management and put it into the creative commons, based on my experience last semester. But how to keep them engaged with the actual class work? That is the question. Multiple choice reading exams? More written homework?
I'm going to use the Army's MDMP process to teach them formal decision making. And then I think I am going to have them produce decision briefs, but probably just hand in the PPTs, not brief them, because I have 50+ students and that is not physically possible without sacrificing half the class meetings to boring briefings.
I am working on killing the disposable assignment, but I am not there yet. Sigh.
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