Below are a series of articles that contain useful tips and resources to prepare to return to the classroom. 

How to Create a Syllabus

A detailed and useful advice guide by Kevin Gannon (Chronicle of Higher Education, August 2, 2021).

"Perhaps you’re offering a new course, or you’re looking to revamp an old one. Maybe that section you were scheduled to teach didn’t make enrollment, and now you’re facing a new prep with only a few weeks (or days!) to get ready. Even if you don’t need to write or revise a course syllabus, though, there’s never a bad time to re-examine and rethink your syllabi. As much as we exhort our students to Read The Syllabus, we ought to make sure we’re giving them something that’s actually worth reading. So without further ado: here’s how to write a syllabus."

Designing Courses for Introverts and Extroverts

Faculty members should identify ways to include significant learning experiences that champion both types of students, write Zala Fashant and Linda Russell. (Inside Higher Education, August 4, 2021).

"Faculty and instructional designers should consider many factors when designing effective and engaging courses. One they often overlook is a student’s orientation to others and the world around them -- notably, if they are introverted or extroverted."

How to Teach a Good First Day of Class

Advice guide by James T. Lang. (Chronicle of Higher Education, August 3, 2021).

"So that first class meeting is a big deal. You want to give students a taste of the engaging intellectual journey they will undertake in the coming weeks — and you have great flexibility in how you go about it. Helping you to make that opening session as effective as possible, whatever your discipline, is the goal of this online guide. What you can expect to find here:

• I’ll start, as we academics so love to do, with a little bit of theory — specifically, four core principles that can help shape your planning for the first day of your course.
• Next, I’ll cover the logistics of a successful first day, including managing the space and technology as well as getting to know your students.
• To show you how to put the principles and the logistics into practice, I will provide examples of what a good set of first-day activities might look like in four disciplines.
• I’ll finish with some suggestions for how to support the good work you have done on the first day with some follow-up activities."

How to Make Smart Choice About Tech for Your Course

Michelle Miller gives advice in the Chronicle of Higher Education (August 4, 2021) on how to choose the best technology for your course.

"In technology, as in so many things, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It takes college students one hot minute to figure out when technology is just a useless embellishment, and they’re unforgiving when you have no good answer for why you chose to go with digital materials when pencil and paper would have sufficed.

Using technology well means being selective. Choosing the right tech tools for your teaching means making strategic choices, weighing costs against payoffs, and staying laser-focused on your course goals — and that is what this guide aims to help you do. It’s for anyone who is in the process of creating a new course or redesigning an old one and needs advice on which technologies to use, how to use them, and why."

10 Course Policies to Rethink on Your Fall Syllabus

Michael Johnson's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education summarizes in 10 points how to adapt your syllabi to better help students in what promises to be another complicated semester.

"This month marks the start of the third academic year shaped by Covid-19. A combination of factors — the more transmissible Delta variant, the lagging vaccination rates, and the mixed support for masks and mitigation strategies — suggest that the fall of 2021 may look more like the fall of 2020 than many of us want to admit. Yet there are steps you can take, as you shape your syllabi, to better support students through what looks to be another thorny semester."