1. Who do you intend your class schedule for?
The students and potential students - has sort of an advertising component.
2. When do you choose a paper schedule, and when do you choose an online schedule? How do you decide how to get the class schedule to students?
I always do it as a paper schedule and also post it since it's more useful to have that. A lot of time it will have
links and that's not very useful on paper.
3. Does your content strategy vary depending on the class type?
Not really. I've sort of developed a form in my head just by taking a previous one - it has become a template and i'm
a creature of habit and so i go with it. next semester I'm teaching undergrads and that might require changes i haven't
thought of.
4. Walk me through the process of creating your class schedule.
i wait until the last possible minute - right now, if i wasn't talking to you, i would be finishing up the undergrad
and 205. then i scale back expectations dramatically - would have been very rich with background info and pointers to other
things, but then i do the minimum - course description, assignments, links. I spend a lot of time thinking about the
course - unstructured, just as background notes in my head. What's going to go in the class and what's not - will make
notes about things i should use. readings, assignments, etc. i write on little scraps of paper and collect them, including
other syllabi and readings and stuff and then i have a stack of paper i refer to.
when i start the schedule, i put the weeks and dates down and count sessions. what can i realistically accomplish in that
time, then i break down into modules (say five modules) and title those modules. then put readings and assignments in
each module and trade those around. and that is pretty iterative, usually a class is too much with too much reading
and i try to scale back and move things around. the last thing i'll think about it the actual grade component - where would
a midterm go, where would a paper go, etc. for 205, i know i'm going to have four papers and they get longer, and i want to
front load it if it's the beginning of the semester, otherwise not sure how to schedule. then i see when the papers are
being assigned and based on what they will have read i decide what a topic should be.
there's a first step i missed - if it's a new class, i need a big picture. before you can do a class, there's a very long
administrative review process, so you must have written a course description with sample readings and assignments. so you
get an idea or someone tells you to take over a class and you don't like their materials (like consulting) so you start over.
so you have an idea for a course and you write essentially a marketing pitch that becomes the course description. so now
i have a course that's going to cover some subjects, those become the modules, and i've already thought about the basic
readings and then i start making the hard choices. and i make a lot of mistakes, especially the first couple of times,
when readings are too long or don't go over or whatever.
this isn't really relevant for the schedule, since this happens beforehand. as a professor, what would be valuable to me
is instead of formatting and reformatting in word, and instead i could just have forms and enter week one and week two
and then i press a button and voila, that's all i need as a value proposition.
5. In your experience, is the class schedule developed over the course of the semester, or created at the beginning of the semester?
I'm too paranoid to not have a complete schedule before classes start - i might tinker but very judiciously, since
students don't like that. students might have made certain decisions (including whether to take the course) based on
the schedule, and you can't just change that up. (then he told me a very amusing story to which the punchline was – “It’s now Tuesday, so read Moby Dick for Thursday)
6. How much do you base a course’s class schedule on previous class schedules you’ve created, either for that course or other courses?
if i've taught the course before i rely heavily on the previous schedule, if it's a new class the others are no help.
7. Do you use the class schedules of other faculty in some way? If so, how?
i sometimes look for formatting thing - i looked at other people's online schedules to see if i could steal html.
for undergrad course i did collect some other syllabi from other universities but now i'm changing that class so they
won't be so much use anymore. the first time i taught tech law at northwestern i looked at pam's (before i knew her).
in general i feel like the courses i'm interested in are esoteric - if i was teaching intro to bio obviously i would
not reinvent the wheel, but the things i teach are more obscure. and for something like ip law you have to redo it every
time because the law has changed.
8. Have you designed a class schedule with another person? If so, how did you manage that process?
nope. i have not. and i don't feel like i'm likely too. not so much my style.
9. Do you make changes to reflect ongoing course changes through the semester?
as little as possible (see moby dick, above). if it's a law course and there's a major development i'll react to it,
but only if i have to.
10. How do you maintain the class schedule document over the semester?
the only thing i would do is, as i've handed out things at the beginning of the semester, i add things like slides
as i develop them, but that's just adding flesh to the bare bones. i update the online word document with links to the
materials i've offered. for instance, last year i added some links to resources on legal terminology, etc. basically i
might add resources based on student questions.
11. If you co-teach, how do you manage the maintenance of the class schedule?
N/A.
12. Do you have a TA, and if so, what role does he or she play in maintaining the class schedule?
this is the first time i've ever had a ta in my whole life - she turned it into html and now she updates it throughout
the semester. for 205 she and david have given feedback on what readings were bad and have worked to improve that. last year
i was teaching someone else's syllabus and materials (pam) and now that's it really my class we're working on an overhaul.
13. What do you do with the class schedule document when the semester ends?
forget about it until the next deadline approaches. i do have a folder system on my computer which is chronological so
i have the old ones around.
14. Do you have a preferred look and feel?
No. neat, clean, other than that, i don't care. i don't feel i have a lot of document designs skills, so i try to keep
it as simple as possible.
15. What features of other professor’s class schedules do you appreciate?
when i looked at all the online syllabi when i first taught at sims, i liked the fact that they had the readings linked
right there so you could go straight to them and print, download, whatever you wanted. a lot of them seemed to have really
good resources (they were websites, not syllabi), so they had lots of nice features outside of the schedule and i liked
that and tried to copy it.
16. In what ways do you prefer your class schedules to other professors?
i don't. i'm embarassed. if you click on course website for other profs, they have websites, i just have a word doc.
i would like a website but i don't have the time or resources to do that.
17. Do you receive feedback from students on your class schedule? If so, what does that feedback tend to be? Do you feel the feedback is representative of your students?
the only feedback you ever get is the course evaluations - that's not so much about the schedule as the operations. indirectly,
they will tell you if there's too much reading or if one was really bad. but i've never gotten feedback on the layout
of the schedule or ease of use or "why did you do that in week 12" etc. obviously you can tell indirectly if one week's
class goes very well and another goes poorly, maybe you can tell the readings are bad, but not much direct feedback.
18. Is there anything that you think could be improved about your class schedule? What are the obstacles to making those changes?
Time and skill. I'd much rather have a website than a schedule and I don't have the tools.
19. Are there other applications for creating course websites or class schedules that you’ve used?
At haas, we use study.net, and it's a terrible, terrible system, very inflexible, and it takes more time to use it,
and the only thing more terrible is catalyst, which was their older one.
20. If so, what have you liked about them? What have you disliked?
one of the insane things about catalyst was that you couldn't attach particular readings to particular modules - they
assumed the organizing unit was an assignment rather than module, you could attach readings to an assignment but not a class.
when you added material to a class it would appear in totally random order, and you could force an order but it would take
hours, and you'd have to start over every time you added new thing. there were lots of access issues with auditors, non-haas
students, etc. the interface was terrible, buttons were hidden or would just appear. you weren't supposed to update it
through catalyst even though students were, and students had three pages of instructions on how to access it, etc. it
was the typical worst thing to do for a new app - no trainig, introduction done in the most unhelpful way possible - memo
from academic dean to faculty saying "We have a new system, you must use it." Nothing about benefits, just ordering people
to shut up and use it and it couldn't really have been worse. if you had problems there were about 40 different people you
might go to for help, and none of them really could help, and you kept getting people pointing the finger at other people
saying they should fix it, etc. the model assumed that anytime you wanted to add a reading it would involve a lisence fee - if you
just wanted to post an assignment you'd have to go through this long questionnaire about copyright. then everyone would get an
email saying the price has changed, you owe zero dollars more. it basically built in a model that did not allow for fair use
or out of copyright.
21. If a system were available for making the class schedule more usable for students, would you invest extra effort?
depends on how much more useful it would be - assuming it didn't add years to my life, if it was really a compelling
feature, then sure i'll do it, and if it's marginally useful, i won't do it even if it's easy. for me, allowing students
to see all their work at once is obviously useful enough to merit the work that it takes.
22. If a system were available for better coordinating student schedules, would you be interested?
at the very highest level, i think if i don't have a big end-of-semester assignment, i might front load,
but i assume that students manage their own schedules and if i tell them in the beginning where my things are scheduled
it's up to them to decide if they can manage it. i would not look at what assignments and exams are in other classes)