Class planning, part 2

Okay. Let’s talk course goals.

The way I figure it, the first step to designing a course is to figure out what the course is about. What it’s teaching. Once I know what I want to impart, what I want to talk about, I can start working up a reading list and group of assignments to ensure that the message gets across.

For the sake of ease, I’m going to try to come up with three main goals for each of my potential classes. Once again, those potential classes are:

1. Rhetoric of Evil
2. Rhetoric of Science Fiction
3. Rules and Loopholes
4. Future technology in the classroom

Starting from the top then:

Questions and the First Order of Things

So I’ve started researching on my own. This is the first time I’ve really had this kind of freedom. I imagine it won’t last forever, but for now all I have is a general topic: question and answer. Specifically as it relates to the internet. But I started looking, and I’ve found a few articles.  So far I’ve read two: “Questions and Question Asking in Verbal Discourse: a Cross-Disciplinary Review” by Greg P. Kearsley, and “Beyond student perceptions: issues of interaction, presence, and performance in an online course” by Anthony G. Picciano.

I’ve also started reading Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Side projects: early attempts to invent courses

The semester has begun, and while I have not yet actually been to any classes, I am doing my best to dive into work regardless. This semester, I am doing research rather than teaching. This is a definite change of pace for me. Over the next day or so, I intend to sequester myself in a library and begin discovering everything anyone has ever said about the topic I am researching.

In the meantime, since I’m not teaching, I have been thinking about it.

What I’ve been doing

I feel I should put some kind of prep entry. The new semester starts a week from today, after all. There are a few things I need to talk about from last semester, and then I need to berate myself for not working harder over break.

First things first. While I presented on the idea of using PowerPoint in the composition classroom, and did so without actually using powerpoint (I was the only person not to, and I wore a shirt that said ‘irony’ for my own edification), the advice of my professor led me to a complete overhaul and a change of focus for my proposal.