And in another sign that the times may be changing, a syllabus for such classes is already here.
Institutional policy and constraints ruled out changing the syllabus or the number of students enrolled in the course.
Such adaptations to the class level and the context without changing the syllabus were discussed by Davis and Varma (2008), who emphasized the importance of designing a curriculum in a way that enables instructors to make adaptations.
In addition, high pupil-to-teacher ratios, overworked and stressed teachers, and ever-changing syllabuses result in dull, flat lessons that involve a VCR and a handout.
For English teachers, the changing of the syllabus is just another sign that the Secretary of Education doesn't listen to them.
And now is a good time to be thinking about new directions in your assessment and evaluation of student work, especially if your syllabus will need changing as a result.
That is now changing -- thanks to a new online tool, the Open Syllabus Explorer, which ranks all of the books students are assigned in college, from #1 -- traditionalists can rejoice, it's Strunk & White's The Elements of Style -- on down.
They have offered the exact same class every year for 15 years, changing nothing, never integrating any new or relevant information into the syllabus, never adding to the book list, memorising every lecture and then regurgitating it while mechanically moving their head back and forth between their Clip Art-heavy powerpoint presentation and the lecture theatre with glassy, hollow eyes.
Tests and syllabuses have changed.
Knowledge of syllabus content?
The John McPhee syllabus.
