Good Day Everyone!

As we are embarking on the final days of our Syllabus Design assignment, I thought I would post a note regarding the "subject" of the Syllabus, and how to choose such.  To back up a bit, there had been some confusion among classmates regarding the "subject" of our Syllabus.  More specifically two possibilities were thought to be "correct" as to the approach:

         1) the "subject" of the training/class/whatever for which the Syllabus is being designed is to be the "topic" or theory chosen by our group (from the book); (in our case Learning Styles, et al)

                                                                 -- or --

         2) the "subject" is supposed to be completely distinct from the "topic" or theory chosen; in which case we would be demonstrating our understanding of the "topic" or theory through our design of a syllabus to teach the given "subject"  (i.e. demonstrating understanding of Learning Styles through the design of a course to teach for example, swimming, fashion design, etc.).

Anyhow, Bo provided a very good explanation of how the assignment is to be completed.  I have included the exact Q&A below, between she and myself, extracted from our class DB forum.  I thought it might be helpful to anyone who was still confused about how the assignment is to be approached.

Ciao! Alexia

My question/concern:  The only suggestion I have with respect to the group project is pertaining to the content itself for the Syllabus Design, and so forth.  There has been a bit of confusion amongst various classmates as to what the subject(s) is for the actual syllabus "course" that we would be teaching. A.  Some people have thought that the subject is the actual topic that we chose to research.  B. While other people have thought that we pick a different subject to teach; and then using the concepts associated with the topic we chose, we are to create a syllabus that demonstrates our understanding of the topic. 

Professor Chang’s response/explanation:  They are correct (option “B” is correct). You can choose any subjects you want to teach, for example, biology, math, swimming, a business training workshop, etc. The theoretical topic you chose can be used as a framework to guide you to design your syllabus. Think of designing clothes, now your theoretical topic is about Spring. The clothes you design should reflect the theme of Spring. It does no matter what clothes you want to design, but the clothes you design should make people immediately think of Spring. Now if your topic is about learning style and environment, then the activities and assignments designed in your syllabus should reflect the main ideas of learning style and environment. For example, based on the literature review, you found out that learners who prefer to work with people like to have an interactive and collaborative learning environment. Then this idea can be reflected in your syllabus design: You may design some collaborative course activities and assignments for those students who prefer collaborative work, such as allowing them to do team based project; arranging tables in the format of roundtables so that team members can discuss their activities together. Some students are thinkers and they don't like working collaboratively, you may design your syllabus to reflect their needs. I designed our current syllabus based on several learning theories. You may not notice it, but each part of the syllabus has its rationales and reflects some ideas that we have learned. It is the same for designing the online course. We don't have physical classroom in an online course, but we do have some kind of virtual space design which both allows students to interact with other students, and at the same time gives them some freedom to pursue their own interests. That is why I allow students to choose the questions in online discussion and I also give them freedom to create their own questions. All the posts which are relevant to question 1, for example, will be grouped together in one space so that it creates a community which ties all students who are interested in question 1 together in one common space, which is basically like several students discussing questions at a roundtable in a physical classroom.  When you are familiar with this process, and you know theories well, you can design different types of syllabi for different purposes easily.  Check pages 25-27 in our syllabus. Bo)