10.5 Taking Over A Course

Taking Over A Course SoT-10-5-TakingOverACourse

Understand the course, before assuming you know what to change.
Understand 'why' things are the way they are, before making superficial judgements.
Do not consider too many changes at once, especially introducing new things you do not have solid experience with. Control the risks.

You want me to take over whaaat???

This is a rough note about how to inherit and take over a course. There is another note on changing your existing course. There is no ‘right’ way, and every situation will be different. However, there are mistakes to avoid and lessons to learn from the past; how to improve the odds. The note makes one big assumption, and that is the course being taken over was actually designed according to sound pedagogical principles and has the right learning outcomes established and agreed to. This is one helluva big assumption.

If this assumption is valid, you should respect the work and effort that has gone into the existing course and not just assume that you have a better mouse trap. Hopefully the previous instructor has left documentation or can share with you why things were done, the rationalization, the back story, the experiences, and what they would do differently.

Unfortunately, this assumption is not always valid. It takes more than a few hours or a few days to thoroughly design a course according to pedagogical principles. If the cognitive skill levels are explicitly part of the learning outcomes, a course design can take several months and involve an advisor with weekly meetings.

This does not necessarily include the actual course material and notes.
This is the time it takes to go through the topics, figure out appropriate sequencing, when and where to use certain pedagogical methods, how to provide bridging for students where needed, what assessment methods are appropriate.
Yes, you can decide all of this in an afternoon or a day or two, but it is our experience that the final course will be worth what you put into it. If you are inheriting one of these courses, all bets are off and you will not likely do worse than the previous instructor; go ahead, make it your own. If you inherit something that is taurus excretus, fix it.
If you are going to wade in and change it immediately, we do ask you to avoid previous mistakes and take a reasonable amount of time to understand what you should be teaching and how it should be taught! Allow for 2-3 weeks of solid effort to do this for most courses at the knowledge/fact level.

Wanting to tinker...

People have a tendency to ‘want to change’ when they take over a course. Just human nature. Nothing to feel bad about, but you should rationalize why you feel this way:

You are used to a different textbook (if you have taught it before).
You think the course is woefully out of date (e.g., textbook from when you were a student).
You have your own ways of teaching various concepts (if you have taught them before).
You have a different idea about what concepts need to be in the course (you might not agree with the previous instructor or the program level learning outcomes).
You have a different idea about what learning outcomes should be sought in the specific course, which then ripples to both assessments and activities.
You have never taught such a course and don’t understand the materials or methods you have inherited and it might be easier to change the course to you, than you change to the course.
You have different beliefs about how learning happens, which affects how you teach versus the predecessor.

Get the reasons to tinker straight, and control impulsive behaviours...

You should be self-aware and mindful as to why you want to change something! Remember, is not about you, it is about the students. And, if it takes you some effort to learn and adapt to the course, what is the problem with that?

If you are just taking over a course for a single term/year to cover someone on leave or if someone else will be teaching it ongoing after your turn, DO NOT CHANGE the course (unless it is something like on-line vs classroom):

Remember to give credit to the original author. Plagiarism is plagiarism, do not take credit for someone else’s work.
Be careful to keep things and respect things; if something was like a test or assignment, do not just willy nilly share with students and thus make life miserable for the returning instructor.
Adopt it as is, like it, embrace it, bury your own desires and thoughts about improvements and changes.
You can add your own touches though; perhaps in terms of narratives, examples, but leave the structure and pedagogy alone.
It does not make sense for many reasons to do a one-off; program perspective, student perspective, your effort/activity perspective.
At the end of your go at it, have a chat or leave a nice note for the next/returning instructor: when went well, what did not, constructive suggestions to consider.

10.5 Taking Over A Course

You want me to take over whaaat???

Wanting to tinker...

Get the reasons to tinker straight, and control impulsive behaviours...

Further reading