Many of us begin our teaching careers by imitating the activities and formats we experienced as students. We thoughtfully plan a selection of readings and construct an arc for the course, we draft a course description for our department and our class syllabus, and we get ready to respond to whatever issues come up in the students’ writing. And, for the most part, it works.

Over time, experienced GSIs recognize that they can be more strategic in designing a course – we get better at anticipating the kinds of challenges our students will face as readers, thinkers, and writers and tailor our courses to meet these challenges accordingly. Planning a course becomes much more about what the students know and can do at the beginning of an R&C course and what they need to know and do by the end of the course. The design process recommended here involves three major components: course learning objectives; learning activities and assignments that will help students achieve those learning objectives; and evaluation of student learning.  Additional logistics arise from these.

Establish Learning Objectives

General Skill Objectives

To draft the overall learning objectives of the course, consider what students are capable of when they enter a reading and composition course, and what you want them to learn by the end of it. Here are some characteristics R&C teachers have seen, especially among freshmen, and basic suggestions for learning outcomes:

Writing: In high school, students may have been taught to write a five-paragraph opinion or descriptive essay or plot summary, often with a funnel introduction (for instance, a paper about Hamlet might begin, “From the dawn of time…”). Many have no idea how to “fill” five to ten pages. In the R&C series, they need to learn to write convincing five- to ten-page argumentative, interpretive, or analytical essays with reasoning based on evidence on a topic of appropriate scope. Their writing must feature clear, standard academic prose.

Reading:  Students may tend initially to read as if they are “decoding” a text to unlock some hidden meaning. They largely rely on the teacher (or the Internet) to supply information about relevance or what aspects of a text to question. An R&C course can teach many more sophisticated techniques for working with readings: scanning for structure and relevance, analyzing parts of an argument, close reading, attending to voicing and rhetorical situation, and generally putting to use the intellectual resources necessary to actively engage with a variety of texts and genres.

Thinking: Many beginning students make generalizations and choose examples to “prove” them; they judge based on personal values; or they may try to evaluate a text’s “correct” or “incorrect” depiction of “reality” without considering its context. We might formulate our objectives for students’ thinking as being able to independently question, analyze, make connections, contextualize, and understand the terms of others.

You might also want to return to the Guidelines from the College of Letters and Science to clarify these general skill objectives.

Of course, students come to R&C courses with a broad range of skills and some are very well prepared by previous courses to move on to more sophisticated work. What follows from this is that an R&C GSI has to take into consideration the learning needs of that full range of students.

Specific Skill Objectives

Once you have drafted general learning objectives regarding reading, writing, and thinking, try framing them in terms of specific objectives. 

  • This sample worksheet (doc) may help you visualize how to do this
    • The first page of the worksheet is filled out with some examples; the second page is blank for your use. Note that the level of analysis shown in the example on the first page gets perhaps more granular than you would find useful for planning. It is meant to demonstrate that a given objective may involve much more than one initially thinks.
  • Or you may wish to formulate your objectives on this model: “Students will be able to skillfully apply the concept of ____ to analyze [object or text], and tell why their findings are significant.” 
  • If you are teaching an R1B (or R5B) course, what skills do you want your students to gain in incorporating research results into their writing? Objectives could include distinguishing primary and secondary sources, or scholarly and popular sources; finding appropriate sources for projects in your field; analyzing and evaluating sources; writing an expository overview of a field; and arguing for a particular position on an issue in the field, among others. 
    • A note about teaching research: Many GSIs assign a complete traditional research paper for R1B. However, be aware that such a project often poses a greater challenge to freshmen and sophomores than it might seem. In the face of such a demanding assignment, student attention tends to focus on finding any sources at all (regardless of quality), formatting, and the end product, rather than on the learning goals. (The level of challenge can also tempt some students to plagiarize.) On designing alternative research activities, see “Design Learning Activities” below. 

Conceptual Objectives

In addition to the skills students need to develop, your course will require students to gain fluency with some conceptual knowledge, along with some factual knowledge, so they can work with the concepts in concrete ways. The answers to these questions can generate another set of learning objectives:

  • What are some of the overarching concepts or metaphors of your course that you would like your students to grasp? You might think of these in terms of the overall narrative arc of your course. 
  • What are the important concepts and the connections you want students to be able to make with the content? 

It can help to draw a mind map or cluster diagram of the elements of the course to experiment with how the texts, objects, and ideas fit together. Initially, do this without reference to course chronology. The purpose of the cluster activity is to come up with a lot of connections you might not initially see just by looking at a list or schedule of readings.

You can also work on the overall idea for your course by explaining it to others, especially others outside your department. This will help you develop it more fully and break it down for undergraduates.

Once you have generated a lot of conceptual threads, consider the order of materials and topics. What concepts build on each other or need to be understood in order? What would be a helpful starting point in terms of teaching these concepts in a sequence? This will help you with the next step: mapping the structure and sequence of the course.

Pull Together the Objectives and Map the Course

Having established the skills and conceptual objectives, as well as a rough order of the content, you can now begin to etch out the instructional units of your course. In R&C, instructional units are usually based on the texts or objects about which students write each of their formal papers. Which concepts and information come into play in each unit? What are the optimal places to introduce or expand on important concepts? Note that while texts or objects traditionally define the units of a course, you can also design instructional units around assignments or skills. 

Next, map more specific skill-learning objectives onto the units of the course. What should students know and do by the end of the first unit? By the end of the second unit? Etc. In their writing, for example, what features should be achieved in their first paper? What other features do you want to see in their second paper? This leads us directly to the next major component of your course: assignments and learning activities.

Design Learning Activities

As you map out the conceptual and skill objectives of the course, ideas for assignments and learning activities may already be on your mind. In each case, consider the setting of the assignment: will it be in-class or take-home? Individual or group? Online or in person? Below are some suggestions and considerations.

See also: Assignment Design and Sequencing and Creating Writing Assignments

Reading Activities

What kind of texts – literary, theoretical, philosophical, etc – will your class feature? What kinds of in-class activities and individual assignments will help students better understand and analyze these texts of your class? Keep in mind that students come with diverse familiarities, skill levels, and understandings of reading as an analytical activity. Some possibilities for activities include here:

  • An individual “close reading” assignment and/or in-class practice close reading a very short literary text early in the semester
  • Group work categorizing types of reading responses as “summary” versus “interpretation”
  • If your course features non-traditional “texts” like films or artwork, how will you teach students to “read” those texts? What is reading for your discipline?
  • Take a look through the “Reading Strategies” ideas of the Teaching Effectiveness Award database.

Additionally, consider what volume of reading you will assign to your students. Students are expected to spend three hours per week per unit credit for each course they are in. This includes class time. So for a four-unit R&C course that meets three hours per week (three hours in class, twelve overall), students have nine hours for their homework. For the readings, you can probably count on students taking two to three times as long to read and interact with a selection as you do. Think not just about the length of the readings, but about the level of difficulty or the degree of effort you want your students to go to with the readings. 

For more on reading, see the Teaching Critical Reading section of the Teaching Guide. 

Writing Activities

As outlined in the 2011 Reading and Composition Curricular Goals and Guidelines (pdf), R1A students are expected to write “32 pages of writing, to be divided among a number of short [2-4 page] essays,” three of which should be revised. For R1B, students must write “two progressively longer essays (totaling at least 16 pages), with at least an equal number of pages of preliminary drafting and revising.” 

Given that writing and revising lie at the heart of an R&C course, what stages of writing do you expect for each assignment? How might you break each of these stages into learning activities? Typically, this means breaking an essay up into a first draft and a second draft. However, it can help to further distill the process into other activities such as:

  • Free-writing, brainstorming, and outlining 
  • For R1B, assigning an essay “pitch” or proposal with a researched and summarized set of secondary sources 
  • Crafting thesis statements, determining paragraph organization, using examples, and developing different modes of argumentation 
  • Peer conferences and peer review sessions 

Additionally, consider the genre of writing assignments you might assign to students based on the subject of the course. There is a rich array of possibilities here, from classic to less traditional approaches: 

  • For literature-based disciplines, the “close reading” essay is perhaps the most traditional first assignment. A more advanced essay might require students to synthesize a literary text with a philosophical or theoretical one. 
  • Non-academic forms of writing can enrich students’ understanding and appreciation of a text. Consider, for example, a book or theater review, personal response to an art piece, or creative retelling of an assigned literary text. 
  • Finally, consider using writing as a mode for students to reflect on their own learning. Journaling or free-writing about their writing process and goals can be a great way for students to see themselves in their writing and begin to develop a sense of ownership over their work. 

More on developing writing assignments can be found in: Assignment Design and Sequencing as well as Drafts, Edits, and Revisions

bCourses 

Many R&C instructors assign short, weekly reading responses via bCourses. You might also require students to respond to each others’ bCourses posts. 

Research Activities

While many undergraduates are excited about the prospect of conducting academic research, be mindful that students will need careful guidance in this area. Many assume that a “research paper” is simply a report: a collection and summary of various sources they have found rather than an argument developed through their own analyses and observations. Accordingly, students often struggle to develop an original argument while also integrating secondary sources. That secondary sources form a pre-existing scholarly conversation – and that their paper should intervene in that conversation – is something they will have likely not encountered before. 

It helps to break down “research” into more focused activities. These activities can either be terminal assignments or build up to a full research paper later in the course. For example, a research assignment might: 

  • Focus on contrasting popular and scholarly treatments of a topic. 
  • Analyze the major differences in two scholarly interpretations (pre-selected by you) of a text or artifact. 
  • Comb through several potential sources for a research project and evaluate them with relevance to a research question. 

An example of a scaffolded R&C research assignment by a former GSI can be found here. This handout of alternative research assignments may also be useful to you. Additionally, the UC Berkeley Library offers consultations with a librarian to develop a research assignment for your class. For R&C, the Library also hosts a “Research 101” workshop and asynchronous research “notebook” activity for undergraduates. You can find more information about those here.

Presentations

Presenting ideas and concepts verbally can be a great way for students to grasp course content from another angle and enrich their communication skills. Some possibilities here include:

  • In-class “elevator pitches” of their essay proposal or topic
  • Introducing the text of the day through a brief presentation and/or set of generative questions posed to the class
  • Leading class discussion on a particular text or topic for the day (a more advanced activity)

Field Trips

GSIs have often incorporated field-trip activities such as museum visits, film viewings, and theater performances into their courses. It can be helpful to have an assignment associated with the field trip such as a writing-response prompt, worksheet or set of questions for class discussion later, etc. For more on activities that require financial support, see the GSI Center’s Course Improvement Grants page.

Other Non-Traditional Activities 

Outside of these activities, there are many other media and formats for student engagement. You might, for example, consider how a creative response project might be integrated into the course. Other GSIs have experimented with using digital media platforms as a mode for student engagement. Some of these inventive assignments can be found in the Teaching Effectiveness Award database.

Plan Assessments of Student Learning

Now that you know the learning objectives and the kinds of activities that will move students toward those objectives, it’s time to think about assessing student achievement of those objectives. These three major elements should fit well together. That is, grades are based on assignments for which the learning activities adequately prepare them, and grades accurately show how well students have reached the course learning objectives. (Students also sense the fairness and usefulness of this arrangement when it is well done.)

In R&C sections, the major, letter-graded assignments are usually formal papers and revisions of papers. The GSI evaluates the papers and revisions using a rubric, which is often given to students early in the semester so they can see the traits of the formal papers they are expected to produce. For more on grading and rubrics, see the Grading section of the Teaching Guide for GSIs. For examples of grading rubrics for R&C sections, contact the GSI Teaching & Resource Center directly. Experienced GSIs are also often happy to share theirs.

In addition, each class session’s homework assignment and the quality of students’ participation in class learning activities are usually evaluated. The grades for these elements of the course motivate students to commit effort to them, and they provide the GSI with immediate assessments of how well students are doing with course material from day to day.

One More Useful Assessment

The course itself should be evaluated during the term: consider soliciting feedback about the effectiveness of teaching and learning activities, fairness of grading, resources students wish they had had earlier in the term, whether students are spending too much or too little time on the assignments, and so on. A formal midterm evaluation instrument takes some planning to design and implement, but it is well worth the time. Students provide valuable feedback on the teaching and learning that take place in the classroom. For more detailed information about running a midterm evaluation, see Conducting a Midterm Evaluation.

A Final Comment

It would be very difficult to achieve the perfect all-around course design in your first round of planning, so you don’t need to be discouraged if your course is not planned to a fine level of detail before the semester starts. You might want to create the overall sequence and strategy at first, and then refine a couple of aspects each time you teach, based on your notes about how well different segments or activities have worked in the past.

Now that you know the elements of your course, you are ready to create the course syllabus.