"Building the Plane as You're Flying It"

In an ideal world, your entire course would be ready to go before it starts. In reality, that rarely happens and many instructors are staying just a step ahead of their students. This page provides some advice to help ensure your semester goes smoothly even when you don't have everything figured out ahead of time.

Have a clear schedule

In your syllabus, outline a weekly schedule that explains what type of work (quizzes, homework, exams, etc.) they will complete each week. Even though you may not have figured out the details of those assignments, this provides a structure for you to fill in as you go through the semester. It also lets students know what to expect.

As you move through the semester, you may find that the schedule you developed is too ambitious and you need to make adjustments. When that happens, make sure you clearly communicate to students what the new plan is and why you made the changes you did. Make sure that you replace the original syllabus with a new one anywhere you may have it linked on Canvas. It is also recommended that, if possible, you only change the schedule once or students may start to get confused and upset.

Build in prep time

Teaching well requires spending a decent amount of time preparing for each session. It may be useful to block off chunks of time on your calendar each week dedicated to course preparation. During that time, you can create your slide decks, record lecture video, develop classroom activities, and finalize details of your assignments and rubrics. These blocks of time should be distinct from time set aside for grading. Otherwise, instructors may find themselves dedicating all their time to grading instead of preparing for coming class sessions.

If you are teaching online, it is recommended that you have all materials ready and available to students at least a week before any assignments are due. Students often take online courses because they have challenging schedules and need flexibility, so you can't necessarily expect them to work on your class every day.

Use existing resources

If you have access to course materials from the person that previously taught the course, it's perfectly okay to just use those materials with little to no alteration. If you have a textbook for the course, they often come with slide decks that you can download. Note that they tend to be very detailed and comprehensive, so we recommend being selective about the parts that you use. Also, be sure to build in space to talk about your own experiences and perspective on the topic!

If you don't have existing materials, there are lots of ideas and resources available for most courses on the internet. A Google search along the lines of 'Ideas for college-level classroom activities / assignments on [topic]' often provides useful information. You can also try asking generative AI (such as ChatGPT or Google Bard) something like 'Create an outline for a college class lasting [x] minutes on [topic], including lecture presentation and activities'.

Accept that you won't be perfect

It's always uncomfortable to make mistakes or need to change plans when you realize that things aren't going as you expected. As an instructor, this will almost certainly happen at some point during your semester - it even happens to people that have been teaching for decades! The upshot is that students are aware that their instructors are humans and will sometimes mess up. The important thing is that you're open about what happened and make clear to students what the new plan is moving forward. As long as you're honest, students tend to be willing to extend grace and forgiveness!