Course Plan:

A Course Plan is a detailed guide to all of the lessons you will be teaching. Your course plan should be 10-20 pages in the format of your choosing. The purpose of this document is to help you plan your course out and demonstrate (for yourself, for your faculty mentor, and for the UTeach Steering Committee) the scope and flow of your course.  It also allows the committee to assess your course and determine whether it is in line with the academic requirements for a UTeach course.

In terms of format, it is often more visually appealing and less confusing for you to select a format that will hold true through each of your 10 lesson plans. We do not require any specific formatting parameters, we only recommend that you select a format that is easy for you and your readers—your mentor and the committee— to follow. This document is primarily for your own benefit, so format it in a way that caters best to your needs as an instructor.

In terms of content, you should include as much detail as you can—think of at least a page per class meeting—covering the items listed below.  The course plan should be a complete, stand-alone description of your plans for the course.  As you think further about the course in the winter and even as you deliver it in the spring, you may decide to make some adjustments, but you need a concrete, detailed baseline to start with.

• Topics to be covered
• Learning objectives:  After this class meeting, what should students be able to do that they couldn’t before?  Use active verbs (not “Know topic X” but “Explain topic X” or “Analyze something in terms of X” or “describe X’s advantages over its alternatives”).
• Preparation instructor needs to do before class (e.g., gather materials)
• Preparation students need to do before class (e.g., readings)
• How you intend to divide up the 50 (or 80 or 110) minutes of class
• Plans for active learning techniques and the use of classroom technology
• Assignments introduced, assignments due
• Detailed descriptions of readings or other out-of-class activities
• Description of how each lesson contributes to the overall theme of the course

Important Notes:

• Keep in mind that the course will be 1 unit, Pass/No Pass Only. This means that it should contain about ¼ the work of a typical, 4-unit course. With this in mind, please refrain from assigning too much reading, too many assignments, or projects that are too involved for the scope of a 1-unit course.
• Most UTeach seminars meet for 50 minutes one day a week. Note that if your seminar meets on Monday, you’ll lose one meeting to the Memorial Day holiday.  Some UTeachers in the past have scheduled 80-minute or 110-minute class meetings, generally in situations where there was “lab work” (e.g., “The Art and Craft of Sewing”) or where the class needed to view, as a group, longer video excerpts.
• Remember to focus on student-centered learning. Please design lessons that promote student engagement in the classroom. Please refrain from scheduling long periods of time during which you will be lecturing. For these types of lessons, please list it as a “Presentation” that you will be giving to the class and try not to have any presentations take up more than 50% of the class time.
• Have fun with it! Think of what you would like to get out of a class like yours and plan your lessons accordingly! Remember that you are encouraged to think out of the box when planning lessons. Some successful non-traditional lessons that have been successful in the past included a walk around campus identifying important plant life, an outdoor small-group centered lesson discussing how each student individually relates to the novel in the course in question, and more. Be creative!
• Remember to create and sustain an open learning environment where all students’ views and opinions are respected. If a specific lesson covers controversial content, it may be a good idea to have a discussion with the class beforehand to ensure a safe classroom environment for all students.

Please look over our examples of previous course plans on the Sample Course Materials page for guidance. If you have any further questions, contact the UTeach Student Coordinator, Olivia Capizzi (ocapizzi@uci.edu).

Syllabus:

A syllabus is a document with all the information for the course listed on it for the reference of both the student and the instructor. Most syllabi are just a few pages long. 

Try to select a format that will not confuse or frustrate students. Feel free to be creative with your formatting, but do keep in mind that the Syllabus must be functional. This document is primarily for your students’ benefit, please format it in a way that caters most to your students’ needs.

In terms of content, we require that your syllabus include all of the following:

• Brief course description
• Course objectives/learning outcomes
• Materials and texts covered in the course (be sensitive to the cost of required materials; try to choose materials available on line or short excerpts that can be reproduced)
• Grading Criteria (what’s necessary to pass the course)
• Schedule of weekly topics, readings, assignments, etc.
• Boilerplate information (the standard information on academic dishonesty, add/drop policy, etc. included on every UCI syllabus. This is provided for you HERE. Please copy-paste it onto your syllabus and format it accordingly)

Important Notes:

• Write your syllabus in the first and second person (“We will do this,” “You will learn that,” “I expect you to do some third thing”) rather than the third person (“Students will learn X”).  The third person might be appropriate for the course plan, but it’s alienating in the syllabus, whose audience is the students directly.
• Try to avoid an authoritarian tone.  You do need to set clear expectations in the syllabus and explain the consequences of not meeting those expectations, but try to take a tone of professional communication rather than of giving orders.
• We strongly recommend against grading schemes that are too elaborate for a one-unit P/NP course.  In a normal course, students have to do at least four times the work, and some of them expect a letter grade; in that situation, it make sense to give a percentage weight to each category and a score to each item and to decide, at some point, where the cutoffs are for each different grade (including the C/C- cutoff for P vs. NP).  But in a UTeach seminar, everyone takes it P/NP.  There’s only one two-way decision to make, and we want to make it possible for every student to achieve a P.  Adequate attendance, preparation, and participation (in class and on projects or assignments) are enough to pass.  Elaborate scoring and calculation will consume a lot of your time, as will dealing with students who want to know why they got a 97 instead of 100. You and the students have better ways to spend that time.

Please look over our examples of previous syllabi on the Sample Course Materials page for guidance. If you have any further questions, contact the UTeach Student Coordinator, Olivia Capizzi  (ocapizzi@uci.edu).