November Summary

This month, my efforts were focused on preparing the Syllabus Design, Syllabus Design Reviews, and Project Demonstration.  The syllabus design seemed to come together as I spent most of my effort (and time) researching potential textbooks. I also spent a good deal of time working on Course Objectives which were much more difficult to write than I imagined.  This was indicated by the reviewers of the syllabus that I submitted.

The activities which were included in the Course Schedule were chosen based on my readings in transformational learning and my own experiences in my seminary education, indicate that building in reflection activities is an important element in transformational learning.

The work on the syllabus design was followed by getting the feedback from a Dean at the campus where I work, and the Director of Faculty Development.  Both of these individuals are people whom I highly respect and value their opinions.  I appreciated their honesty and clarity in discussing the strengths they observed and the improvements suggested for my syllabus design.

Finally, I worked on the Project Demonstration which was an effort to bring everything together in a final demonstration ofthe material covered and learned during this semester. It was an interesting and engaging experience.

Emotional Intelligence Syllabus Evaluation

Emotional Intelligence

Course Syllabus Evaluation

Dan Royer

EDAC 635

Strategies for Teaching Adults

Dr. Bo Chang

Ball State University

The reviewers for my Emotional Intelligence Syllabus review were Arlene Haase, Dean of the Anderson Campus at Harrison College and Nancy Lindfors, Director of Faculty Development and Training at Harrison College.  Of the two reviewers Nancy Lindfors was definitely more detail oriented and focused on language and sentence construction errors.  She offered many good comments and suggestions for the Syllabus Design.  She stated that she like the course objectives being right up front.

Among her comments for improvement, the one that is most insightful is the comment that the course objectives when she observed the following: “When writing objectives, it is important to write . . . students will be better prepared to . . .” also she commented that the objectives should have a degree of measurability present and for each objective have a clear idea of how that objective will be measured.  In addition, she observed ways in which wording could be simplified to clarify the objective.  In my objective number 4, I originally wrote, “Identify what is meant by the term Emotional Intelligence.”  Her suggestion was to change this to a more simple statement, “Define Emotional Intelligence.”

She also reviewed the weekly course schedule and offered the advice to list sections for each week and keep the syllabus as high level as possible.  Additionally, she suggested that in the weekly assignments too much narrative was present and that the assignment got lost in the wording. Her final comment referred to my list of references and asked how students would access these readings.

In response to Nancy Lindfors review, I agree that there is room for improvement in the use of language to construct the syllabus and opportunities for simplification.  It is also appreciated that she offered a great deal of insight into writing course objectives and simplifying the wording for students.  I also appreciated her comments about the way in which the weekly course schedule was constructed.  I certainly appreciated having someone working at her level give me these pointers.

However, while a great deal of the formatting I adapted in the construction of this syllabus design was based on my experience with  the syllabus where I currently work, I chose to depart from that format and use a more detailed approach to the Course Schedule.  While I believe that much of what I have written could be stated in a more concise and abbreviated fashion, I also believe that the syllabus should offer explanation, particularly when introducing a tool, such as the journal which is designed to be used to produce moments of reflection as a method to develop effective emotional intelligence tools. 

Her observations about better ideas for simplifying language and wording things more directly and were appreciated.  Her observation about the references list was a good one and I thought that these references should be included as a reading list.  Overall, I very much appreciated her comments and feedback.

The second reviewer was Arlene Haase, who offered some additional comments about the construction of the course objectives.  Both Arlene and Nancy agreed that the course objective #4 should state “Define Emotional Intelligence.”  Arlene stated that the think she liked most about the syllabus design was it level of detail, particularly in the weekly activities.  She suggested that students would have a guide on the way the course was to be carried out and how they would measure their progress.  She also observed that the activities were not text dependent and that a change in textbook would allow for the retention of these activities.  She also suggested that the course objectives mirrored the course description closely.

In her suggestions for improvement she offered that the objectives could be a little more specific in the details, particularly when it comes to defining specific concepts or phrases.  She also suggested that connecting the objectives more tightly to the class schedule would e helpful for the students.  Finally she suggested that an objective which would demonstrate the value of Emotional Intelligence in other courses would be helpful.

I found Arlene’s review to be very helpful from a practical perspective.  As I read through her comments, I could understand that her perspective was from someone who had to implement the syllabus and objectives.  I could appreciate this perspective, since in many cases syllabus design is already complete, and our task is to take the approved syllabus and add in our specific course assignments.  I also appreciated her perspective of seeking to give the adult students in this course something of practical value.  We do need to inform the students how this course would be applicable to other college courses which they take.

I do appreciate the review by these educators and agree in the majority of what they had to offer.  I do understand that objectives are very important to the development of a workable syllabus, and that these can provide a great deal of guidance to the students in the course.  Since syllabus design is an area where I have very little practice, I appreciated their comments.

These reviewers are people with whom I work, and I value their opinions.  However, I also understand that there are different approaches to syllabus design.  My exposure to other syllabus designs in other schools (including Ball State) gives me a perspective that may be different from that of my reviewers.  Regardless of this difference, I appreciated their comments and suggestions for improvement.