Norman Eng - Create an Engaging Syllabus: A Concise, 7-Step Guide for Professors

Create an Engaging Syllabus by Norman Eng

2018 Norman Eng

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author/publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions, contact:

Visit the authors website at: http://NormanEng.org

Cover Design by Susana Ma

ebook ISBN: 978-0-9985875-2-3

Want to transform your teaching in the classroom? Then download my audiobook, Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting, and Engaging Students. As an Amazon bestselling ebook in seven education categories, Teaching College is used by professors everywhere.

As a brand new teacher, this is life-altering. I feel like I now have the resources and skills of someone far more experienced than me. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Nichole J.

I think one of the reasons I like this book so much is that [author Norman Eng] avoids a lot of the theory and educational jargon that often fills books. He helped me understand the basics of instructional design in a whole new way. Joel R.

The content is fantastic. It is well written with practical examples and completely applicable to me as an adjunct lecturer. The ideas are clear and the suggestions for execution are 'on-point'. I have already started putting some of them into action. I highly recommend this book to anyone who lectures. Paula-Anne J.

http://normaneng.org/tc/audiobook

BEFORE TRAINING college instructors and professors, Dr. Norman Eng worked as a third- and fifth- grade teacher for the New York City public school system, and before that, as a marketing executive for New York-based advertising agencies.

While pursuing these two careers, he learned how critical it was to cultivate relationships with audiences through communication. By applying K-12 and marketing ideas, such as active learning and target audience profiles, Norman transformed his instructional capacity in higher education and received over 90 percent recommendation rates from his students and colleagues.

Currently, Norman teaches education courses for the City University of New York and helps professors 10X their teaching through his bestselling book on Amazon (Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting, and Engaging Students), his blog, his online course (Teaching College Masterclass), and his professional development training workshops.

To find out more, visit: http://NormanEng.org and https://TeachingCollegeMasterclass.com

Engs experience in both marketing and professorship enable him to paint syllabi in new and powerful ways.Pro tips, resources, and vivid examples make the content clear and digestible, and templates make it easy for readers to apply learned concepts. As a fan of Engs bookTeaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting, and Engaging Students, I loved getting this expansion on syllabi.

- JENNY GRANT RANKIN, Ph.D., Author ofSharing Your Education Expertise with the World: Make Research Resonate and Widen Your Impact, Lecturer, University of Cambridge Post Doc Masterclass

In this work, Norman zeroes in on the pedestrian task of preparing a syllabus. Many instructors probably consider this endeavor as a straightforward delivery of information. I received many such documents as a student. They were comprised of a couple of typed pages with headings and bullet points. These drab documents never included compelling images or tantalizing hooks. What a missed opportunity! I typically scanned the syllabus and promptly forgot or lost it. Please remember, this is often a students first interaction with a professor. Wouldnt it be worthy to alter your syllabus so it grabs students and draws them in? Wouldnt it be better to build student engagement and excitement prior to the delivery of the first lesson? If your answer is yes, you picked up the right book!

- JAMES STURTEVANT, Author & Podcaster,Hacking Engagement

Norman Eng is a breath of fresh air for teaching at the college level.Create an Engaging Syllabuswill actually get you excited about writing your syllabus, and it will make your students excited to read it!

- JENNIFER GONZALEZ, Editor-in-Chief atCult of Pedagogy

IMAGINE YOU find yourself in one of the following scenarios:

Its August 20th. Lets see I have one week before classes start and three courses to teach. Time to update last springs syllabi. I should probably insert some new articles. Maybe revise the course policies. Last semester, too many students didnt do the reading, so something needs to change. Maybe give them a quiz every class? Find better texts? I also need to enforce the attendance policy bettertoo many students just waltzed in halfway through my lecture. I wonder what Google has to say about that?

Its August 25th. I can't believe the university just offered me a course to teach last minutecmon, guys, wheres my time to plan? I dont even have a university email address! Well, at least I have a syllabus from the last instructor. Even better, they emailed me a digital copy. Ill use her texts, her course policies and assignments, and then Ill improve on it as I go along.

As an adjunct professor, Ive experienced both scenarios. Either way, I didnt spend enough time developing my syllabi. Most of us follow a template and rarely question it. Because of that, were not thinking about the student perspective. Is it a coincidence that syllabi are increasingly seen as contractsdense, detached, and unreadable?

But they shouldn't be. Contracts are terms of expectations that both parties can agree to and signneither of which students do. In reality, it is used to cover the asses of those who write them. Have you noticed how much writing there is?

It matters because many teachers complain their students dont care about learning. That they just want to pass or get an A.

We are the culprits. We make classes boring, and it starts from the syllabus.

Often, its the first piece of communication students get from us. And just as in a first date, students figure out very quickly if were worth it. Malcolm Gladwell calls this evaluation process thin-slicing, which describes narrow windows of experiences that can be accurate or even more accurate than judgments made with much more information.

All you need is 30 seconds worth of data, according to researchers Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal. They found that short video clips of professors instruction (without sound) was enough for students to write evaluations that were just as accurate as those written by students who sat through the whole term with that teacher.

Bottom line: First impressions are THAT important.

Students know if you care. They sense passion.