Hi there! I’m Christina Katopodis, founder of Engaged & Ready (E&R), a community where faculty find support and resources to empower their students so they are engaged and ready to learn.
Over 300 instructors have taken the 10-Day Syllabus Challenge, offered live in August 2024 and January 2025, and asynchronously after that. I am no longer hosting live sessions. This page holds an archive of the PDFs from the original August 2024 challenge so anyone can use them at their own pace.
Why take the challenge? 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.
The 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
- 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
