Syllabus and adventure

There are several things that I really enjoy about teaching. I enjoy working with students. I enjoy discussing ideas and seeing where those discussions might lead. I enjoy helping people see things from a different perspective than what they might be used to. But there are a couple of things I don't enjoy about teaching-- grading papers and writing a syllabus.

Syllabus writing is a funny thing-- initially it's exciting-- you can try new ideas out and see how you want them to go together. But then, it's overwhelming-- planning the entire semester at once opens up a lot of possibilities-- what if the students want to do this or that.

When I was a kid, there were choose your own adventure books. If you want Amy to stay on the island go to page 55. If you want Amy to try to swim off the island turn to page 110. Now, with hypertext, choose your own adventure becomes a click vs. a turn. The reader has to just go to the new place; he/she can't read all of the options and choose the best one after the fact.

This makes me wish I could write a choose your own adventure syllabus. If you want to do a project on literacy, click here, and the page opens up to the assignment that the student would do-- read something-- create an ethnography. If you want to do a project on culture, click here, and the page opens up to an assignment about television-- watch this-- read that-- write a script for a news segment on how television portrays American culture. Do you just want an easy A with no work-- that page opens up to an error message-- page not available.

But, we don't write choose your own adventure syllabi-- instead we put the disclaimer at the top that we, the teacher, maintain the right to amend the syllabus at any given moment-- and most of the time, because we don't want to do the planning involved, keep the syllabus the same. Sometimes we learn something new in the course of the semester-- or something really important happens-- and we change it up. So I guess we choose the adventure.