5/21/25: Day 1 of Designing Forward

Activity: Review a syllabus and consider if your values are articulated in its design. Reflect on what you are noticing.

3 VALUES I’m articulating (for now):

• IMAGINATION: If you can imagine something, you can start to believe it.
• PERSONHOOD: Your story is not separate from your learning.
• LISTENING: Listening without needing to respond but to absorb for cultivating empathy.

I’m looking at my Movement for Community syllabus from Spring 2025. The course was offered online and asynchronously.

There is a real compartmentalization of content in this syllabus. The required, dry and logistical oriented information vs. the language and explanation I use to help students understand what the course journey looks like.

I’m wondering about:

• How I might share what students can expect from me (as an educator),
• How to better illustrate the ways students have agency in this class (choice of modality for assignments for example)
• Could there be ways I use chunks of language in my syllabus within the design of the canvas experience?
• If I share my values, will they be surveilled by the university in ways that might not be positive?
• The syllabus shares how you can be successful in the course, should I include what happens if your are not “successful”?
• I’m not sure if students actually read the syllabus, especially in an online asynchronous class so (see above), how can chunks of it be visible as part of modules on canvas?