Syllabus Design Guidance for Spring 2022
Consider your stance on absences
Different faculty will naturally have different policies when it comes to handling student absences and fielding requests to attend in-person sessions via Zoom. Below you’ll find some sample language meant to cover a range of possible stances.
Your presence in-person in class is immensely valuable, and most of our learning will happen in the conversations we have during our synchronous sessions. For those reasons, I encourage you to attend every session that you’re able to attend. That said, I understand that life is unpredictable and that you may have to be absent when you’re ill or quarantining or dealing with other life issues. For these reasons, I do not take attendance and do not count attendance toward your grade in the course.
When you’re unable to physically attend class (e.g., because of quarantining) but are still able to participate, please use the Zoom link in the Canvas course to attend virtually. It’s helpful for you to let me know in advance that you’ll be attending this way, but I will always leave the Zoom room open just in case.
When you’re unable to physically attend class (e.g., because of quarantining) but are still able to participate, I can Zoom you into the session, but will need several hours’ [or 24 hours’, or 2 hours’, depending on your policy] notice. If I don’t hear from you in time, Zoom will not be set up for the class session.
If you’re unable to physically attend class, either because of illness or other unavoidable commitments, please don’t pressure yourself to attend virtually; absences of this kind will be considered excused and will not affect your grade. In other words, if you’re sick, focus on resting rather than class. If you’re otherwise obligated, focus on that other obligation rather than class. We can work together afterward to help you get caught up.
In order to keep the in-person experience fully in-person, Zooming into class won’t be an option. If you’re unable to attend class in-person, please connect with this asynchronous resource on Canvas.
Please come see me in virtual office hours to go over what you missed.
Table of Contents
Consider your stance on absences
General considerations for designing your syllabus
General considerations for designing your syllabus
- Partner with Students. This partnership can manifest in many different ways, but two possibilities are:
- Create a Class Norms document (can include attendance, Zoom, and device policies) or
- Engage in collaborative note-taking (students share a doc but rotate the responsibility).
- Flexibility: with the evolving health and safety measure surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, consider building-in flexibility where you can. Some ideas include:
- Creating smaller teams or groups of students who can work together on reading or study questions in-class and virtually, as needed.
- Have a sense of what flexibility, if any, you might have around content, in the event that you find it challenging to cover the planned syllabus in its entirety.
- Assign low-stakes assessments more frequently as opposed to infrequent, high-stakes ones. You may also want to familiarize yourself with Universal Design principles at the heart of accessibility.
- Health and wellbeing:
- Whenever possible, aim to avoid assignments due after long weekends to support student breaks during the term.
- Refer to the “Health Resources” tab that is standard in the Canvas course interface. This groups all student health and wellness resources into one location.
- Consider infusing health and well-being in your course design by partnering with the Engelhard program at CNDLS.
- Click here for a complete guide to designing for flexibility.
