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[der_gadfly]

I think I now know why preps are considered so difficult. Just starting back to teaching, and was told to select my own textbooks etc. (Course#1 is taught by 3-4 different people, all using different texts, all using different objectives, all ignoring any semblance of conformity, also with no way to compare student performance to state requirements). When I inquired into the official departmentally established course objectives, I got a blank stare and a Ralph Kramden-esque "hummuna, hummuna..." response. Apparently, it is a free-for-all out there. Having been in an environment with a huge headstart on establishing SOME level of conformity (all students who take basketweaving 101 will make a rectangular mail basket, and then any three others as defined by their instructor)(we all use Jones' 2004 edition of Basketweaving for Idiots)

I guess I kind of knew that this goes on, however, it is now clear to me why the accreditors are putting so much pressure on higher education now: there is no way to demonstrate how a college education adds value!

Well, I guess I can do the prep work after sundown so I can still enjoy the nice weather: This is better than unemployment!

[profh]

This tends to happen in English departments.  I've noticed many other faculty members want to turn comp into a lit survey.  When I teach 102, I end up with students who have no idea how to format a paper, how to use MLA citations, etc.

[grasshopper]

So what's the problem? You get to teach what you think is relevant. I'm not convinced that conformity is necessarily something that we should strive for. Of course, that varies from discipline to discipline. But really, I don't know what you're bellyaching about. You get to teach a course entirely how you want to! What's not to like?

[watermarkup]

I've seen both sides, and department wide conformity pretty much sux. I liked the place where we all covered the same chapters from the same textbook (for an introductory course), but using whatever pace and methods and tests we wanted. Because, you know, we all had fricking Ph.D.s and teaching experience, so why not trust our judgment? Where I'm at now, I get a (pointless, unworkable) sheet with each (stale, unrevised) exam that explains what errors are worth a quarter point.

[aneumey]

What is your problem with that?  You get to develop your own course.   Seems to me that you have been brainwashed somewhere along the line into thinking that standardization is something to be desired.  Individuality is a good thing.

[profxfiles]

I think that there is a big difference between a department that requires every intro class to be the same down to the last exam question and one that sets clear goals that different faculty can reach in different ways if they choose. I don't care how English 101 is taught, but I DO care whether or not the students learn basic research & writing skills in English 101

 I don't teach English (I teach political science), but because my English department treats English 101 as a Free-For-All, Everybody-Teach-Whatever-The-Heck-They-Want course (Brit lit survey, queer studies, feminist theory, ecology studies, media studies, to name a few I know of), I am forced to add a section to all of MY courses about proper citation, plagiarism, using the library, etc. because I cannot assume my students were taught ANY of that in English 101. In other words, I get to go over basic citation skills in my "American Government" course because it is too much of a burden on our English department to develop some sort of coherent standards.

For me, this would be like a math department telling their faculty that it is fine to replace multiplication with Spanish, or a music department telling the basic theory instructors they can skip harmony and teach badminton instead. I realize teaching the intro stuff is boring (I teach American Government every semester), but isn't there an argument to be made that there are some foundational pieces of the composition curriculum that the faculy as a whole need their students to know?

(PS: I should note that my department has a series of standard learning goals for our classes to ensure that our majors are all given the same basic background in our introductory classes. That way, when they arrive our upper-division classes, we don't have to back over the three branches of governments, etc.)

[der_gadfly]

Well, the problem grasshopper, is that the course is one that fills the state requirements for teacher certification, and yet, when I compared the objectives of the other instructors, there was no consistency, and few even addressed the competencies that the state expects. Ok, objectives aside, those are actually quite easy... so are the first two days of the lectures.......

It is not about being brainwashed..... my experience in the past was that the curricula were somewhat constructivist, with course#1 leading to course#2, and the expectations that certain things need to be taught in #1 so that students CAN succeed in #2, all without having profs worry about having to do remediation. When I used to hire adjuncts, we gave them a pretty solid syllabus, with all the key points to cover, told them to dance around them as they see fit, and gave them the 'recommended' first assignment, all to help them get started. In some courses, we had established certain assessment points, which actually did help us work better with the advanced students.

I also dont have any textbooks handy, and I suspect that it will take a week or so to get the instructors editions. So, all I can do is build a shell for the courses, maybe put together some relevant notes, but the courses will not be well-organized in time for the semester. I am not used to wading in so far without being more well-prepared.

I posted merely to state that I now 'see' the problems facing late hires..... I was in no way suggesting that there should be a lock-step intro-course set-of-exams etc. 

Thanks profxfiles, for the supportive words.

[kedves]

I've been a late hire, rushing a prep for a course I've never taught before, in situations in which I could choose my own textbook and in situations in which I couldn't.  Choosing my own book and creating my own syllabus make the process easier for me. 

I used to wonder what students were learning in intro taught by other faculty, and then I got students in upper-level classes whose intro instructor was me.  Now I don't wonder any more.  You can simplify and focus on shared objectives, but many students will have only a fuzzy idea of the material a year or two later regardless of how they learned it or who taught it. 

[profxfiles]

The problem is that we now treat English 101 as if it is different than math requirement or anything else. We expect everyone here at WI State University to be competent in math, and we define "competent" in a specific way. Our math department could never arbitrarily decide not to teach algebra, yet our English department allows professors to decide whether or not citation skills should be part of the curriculum.

Our English 101 is SO screwed up that the Education College  started a completely separate "English 101 For Teachers" to make sure their would get the basic information they needed to meet state requirements. I now get to spend two weeks in my Intro To Political Science class teaching research skills, citations, and library skills. Thanks to my English department's unwillingness to set even basic standards,  I had to drop out the material on classical political thought (bye-bye, Plato) to cover the material that should be part of any introductory composition course. 

[msparticularity]

Let me begin by saying that I sympathize, because I dealt with the same thing for years while I was teaching courses in the core curriculum that relied upon certain things having been covered in English 101-102. And I agree that it is shocking how little comp is actually taught in first-year English classes at many universities. And it's really, really shocking how badly the seniors and master's level students write!

At the same time, there is pretty good evidence that even when students do get this stuff taught well in English, they still need a lot more support than seems reasonable to us at generalizing it to additional content areas. Apparently, what happens is that when they get inundated by new content, they lose their grip on skills that they've only recently learned. I was told about a study years ago that was done at the U of Chicago Law School on this; the first-year law profs were just horrified by how badly their students wrote, despite their terrific college records and high standardized text scores. It turned out that once the students gained a better grasp of the content they also got back their superior writing skills. (I've never been able to run down the reference--it's from back in the 80s, I think.)

So, yeah--we all teach comp to a greater or lesser degree.

[watermarkup]

Well, shoot, Gadfly, now that you explain that it's the rushed course prep that you're talking about, I totally agree that that sux too. Coordination and standardization are big issues, but your situation really is one where some degree of standardization is a very good thing. Some of my most frustrating teaching experiences have been when the new department asked me to teach fall courses at a new institution without much guidance as to what they were actually looking for, and before I had the faintest idea what their students needed or what resources their campus offered. As a VAP, I'd much rather have my "dream course" in the spring, so I can prep it after getting a feel for what the department's needs are.

[aandsdean]

OK, on the English 101 thing, here's a set of outcomes developed back in the day when I was chair of an English department.  Please note that they allow pretty much anything in terms of course topic, but require some specific things (e.g., citation--and those of you in PoliSci complaining about teaching citations, you'd have to do it anyway, since in English we use the MLA format rather than APA).  This isn't that hard, though as I've spent the last 30 years with English professors I guess I should say "this isn't hard for anyone except English professors":

Course Topics:   Specific topics (readings, discussion subjects, etc.) are at the discretion of the individual instructor, but all sections of ENGL 1101 will cover the following topics:
* Strategies for college-level writing, including vocabulary, grammar, style, purpose and audience;
* Revision;
* Basic research methods for college-level work, including an introduction to library resources;
* Analysis of texts orally (class discussion) and in writing.


Expected Course Outcome:   The following general outcomes for ENGL 1101 were approved by the English faculty, and henceforth are to be included on syllabi for all sections of the course. They are not meant to be prescriptive except in the broadest sense; rather, they are an articulation of our consensus goals for student learning in every section of the course. Readings, pedagogy, and assignments are at the individual instructor's discretion, though they should be aligned with these goals and provide legitimate ways to assess students' progress towards achieving them.

As a result of taking ENGL 1101, students will be able:
* To acquire an ability to write organized, clear, correct, and purposeful prose;
* To understand the principles and strategies of argumentation and analysis;
* To acquire sensitivity to written and oral language as a means of understanding how we relate as individuals to the larger community;
* To grasp the essential nature of research and how to synthesize research in writing so that the insights and documentation are logical and clear;
* To understand through the use of textual models how writing and reading are means for connecting the writer to contemporary culture and its diverse problems and conditions.

[aneumey]

Wow, no basic competencies/objectives at all?  That really is bad.  I taught at a school once where the entire course was canned one was not allowed to deviate, so when I hear anything about outcomes/standardization, I tend to get snappy.  But nothing to ensure that the basic purpose of the course is met (or even to define what the basic purpose of the course is)?  That is really bad!

[grasshopper]

Wow, no basic competencies/objectives at all?  That really is bad.  I taught at a school once where the entire course was canned one was not allowed to deviate, so when I hear anything about outcomes/standardization, I tend to get snappy.  But nothing to ensure that the basic purpose of the course is met (or even to define what the basic purpose of the course is)?  That is really bad!

No, the basic purpose of the course is for students to learn how to read literature critically (and to drop the ubiquitous "I thought this character was dumb. I totally wouldn't have said that), and to learn how literary criticism is researched and written. In my experience, Intro to Lit courses aren't really about the literature itself at all. They tend to be more about how to study literature. The actual texts are just vehicles by which students learn the skills needed to read texts. They're training wheels for literary criticism. That's why there's usually so much freedom in the choice of texts.

This is why I said earlier that the need for conformity varies from discipline to discipline. Someone teaching in a STEM field might require students in second, third, and fourth year courses to have a very specific body of knowledge. In, say, English Lit, the most important thing isn't that they've all read Hamlet. It's that they all know how to read a short story without critiquing it like they're chatting with their friends about what Dylan did in the latest episode of 90201: The College Years.

Now, that said, I've known schools that do have required reading lists in Intro courses, so that students at later stages can draw from a common bank of literary references. The prof teaching 3rd year 20th C. Poetry will know, without a doubt, that all of his students have read key texts in their intro courses, and can make reference to these texts without teaching a separate class on that one allusion the author makes to Oedipus Rex or whatever. He can just say "Oedipus Rex," and know that the class recognizes the reference. But that kind of stuff is a bonus. The real goal of Intro lit courses is to teach students how to read, study, and write about literature. The nitty gritty about specific texts, periods, and critical methodologies/lit theories usually comes later.


English Lit is NOT comp. Lit profs are trained to read and write about literature. They are not trained in composition. My work is interdisciplinary, so I've taught courses across a couple of different disciplines. And in every one, I've included comp exercises. Let me tell you, one intro English course is not going to teach students how to research and write a paper. These are skills that need to be practiced over and over and over and over again.


Gadfly, I've taught last minute courses before, too. On one memorable occasion, I had to revise what I'd planned to do for two courses at the last minute. When I say "last minute", I mean less than a week before the semester started. And no, it's not fun. But you do what you've got to do.

Again, I don't get the bellyaching. This is a blessing. You get to teach what you want, and how you want to teach it.

[redding]

Education is not my area, but from what I understand professional programs like business and Ed. work really differently from A&S courses.  I believe that there are state-approved (correct me if I'm wrong) objectives for each course and that deviating from these mandates could result in loss of accreditation.

This was a big shock to me when I started to come into contact with people in such areas as it seemed like a violation of academic freedom.  I'd never heard of such a thing as a "course objective" until I recently started TT.  We in the A&S areas have *way* more flexibility in our choice of course material.