Hi there! I’m Christina Katopodis, founder of Engaged & Ready (E&R), a growing community where faculty find support and resources to empower their students so they are engaged and ready to learn.
The 10-Day Syllabus Challenge launches on Monday, August 5, 2024. Participants will receive an email from me every morning for 10 business days (spanning 2 weeks), containing: a brief video, and a PDF with a short task for that day to build a transformed syllabus.
Why? The syllabus is the first document we give our students, and it often reads like a bunch of demands and rules that can dampen their excitement for learning. Devote 15-60 minutes a day for a couple weeks and your syllabus will be more student-centered, inviting, joyful, and help you cultivate an inclusive learning community.
This is for instructors new and old, and for all of us who want a little accountability to get things in order before the semester starts.
The challenge won’t write the syllabus for you–you’re the subject matter expert!–but it will help to give it an equity-minded and inclusive framework. We’ll change the tone to a more inviting one; audit your evaluation structure and content to emphasize individual and collaborative participation, empower students, make the course load manageable, and more. The challenge breaks up changes into small parts, and infuses the syllabus with positive, student-centered approaches to learning skills that will last a lifetime.
Want to join but worried about falling behind? Fear not! These videos and PDFs will always be available to you, and you can save them and come back to them whenever you want, as often as you want! I’ll send you one email each day of the challenge (August 5 – 16), but if you need to take a break, you can always save them and pick back up where you left off. I recommend doing this over two weeks, but you can set the pace.
When you take on this challenge, you’ll receive daily prompts (written and video) from me plus live support. When you sign up, you’ll receive a Zoom link to my “Virtual Office Hours.” I’ll hold four of these collective hour-long meetings: two in Week 1, and two in Week 2. There will be four meetings total, one hour each, when we’ll meet as a community. Office Hours are a great time to workshop materials, confer with likeminded colleagues, ask questions, and think through different assessment models (we’ll talk a lot about ungrading and alternative assessments).
Fill out this form to sign up for the 10-Day Syllabus Challenge
Registration closes on Thursday, August 1, 2024.
Our 10-Day Agenda
- Day 1. Welcome Letter
- Day 2. Office Hours Statement
- Day 3. Evaluation Audit: Toward Self-Evaluations
- Day 4. Evaluation Audit: Grading Group Participation
- Day 5. Evaluation Audit: Transform Your Grading Schema
- [Weekend]
- Day 6: Transform Your Grading Schema, Part II
- Day 7: Map it Back to Learning Outcomes
- Day 8: Content Audit
- Day 9: Handling Feedback and Deadlines
- Day 10: Revise and Share
Looking for more on lesson plans and activities throughout the semester? I also lead small faculty cohorts that support faculty who are applying active learning and alternative grading models. We meet for an hour once a week for 12-15 weeks throughout a semester. Send me a message to ask me about joining a cohort!
