Weaving our Syllabus with Values

• A Design Forward activity on 5/21/25

The three values I chose to emphasize for today are Enjoyment, Relevancy, Flexibility.

• Enjoyment: I wish for my students to have fun in physics and astronomy and not find it scary or boring.
• Relevancy: I want my students to see how relevant physics really is to their major. If they see me buying in and caring about their interests, then maybe they will see how physics can enrich and inform their disciplines.
• Flexibility: I’m trying to be more flexible with deadlines and with my approaches to course policies and grading.

How does my syllabus stack up? I’m looking at my syllabus for University Physics II, the “most traditional” of my courses

• Flexibility
  • I believe my syllabus best reflects this value. I tried ‘ungrading’ in each of my courses during the Spring 2025 semester, so the syllabus outlines all of the flexibility built into that. Flexible deadlines, flexible workload, and the ability for students to choose what grade range makes the most sense for them.
• Relevancy:
  • My course very much reflects relevancy, but there is not much emphasis in my syllabus about it, other than a few short sentences. The first chapter of the workbook which students receive from me at the beginning of the semester, which is kind of a continuation of the syllabus, speaks to how the course connects with student majors – but I could certainly be upfront about it in the syllabus.
• Enjoyment:
  • I try to bring joy and levity to my classroom each day. But the syllabus is probably a bit too stuffy. I think I could lighten it up and better reflect ‘the fun of physics’ in the syllabus. For years I’ve wanted to do a major redesign – it just hasn’t happened yet.

How could I bring the JOY into my syllabus? It needs more images, pictures, color! It needs playful language. Yes, there are policies and “business matters” that need to be addressed, but I can stuff some of that into the first chapter of the workbook. The syllabus, the first document that we look at together, needs to reflect the core values of the class. It could have dad jokes, comics, and maybe some space for a group activity or reflection – something to fill in and be interactive with it.