[MUSIC PLAYING]
BETSY SIGMAN: The first tip that I'd
give them is to get syllabi from other people who have taught
the class, if you possibly can.
After that, don't be wedded to that
because you have to teach in your own way.
So if you know things about syllabi
that you've seen elsewhere or even
syllabi that you had in college or grad school.
Go ahead and pull things that you
remember from former syllabi that might have helped you.
But the more syllabi you can look at, I think the better.
I think it's very important to put class participation,
for example.
And I have a detailed series of what class participation
grades mean and what it means to do well in class.
And that's very helpful because class participation
is a judgment thing.
And they want to know, well, how did you
come up with this grade?
And I can refer them back to the syllabus.
And I can say, I compared you with the rest of the students.
And this is where you fell.
And it solves a lot of problems that I
think teachers sometimes have with the class participation
grade.
By my book, class participation is extremely important.
So I don't minimize it.
I feel like if they're there, and they're trying,
and they give evidence of trying,
they deserve some credit.
So I spell that out in a very detailed fashion.
I think it's important to put on your syllabus
what the deliverable, as we call it the business school,
is on that day.
And I put things like, preparation.
And so under the preparation column of the table,
I put things that are due in bold.
And then I put things that I expect
them to come to class ready to discuss or give an example
or something like that.
And I find that that's interesting,
in terms of getting the students a little bit more interested
in what's going on in class and willing to participate,
be willing to participate in it a little bit more,
as I go around the room.
And for example, in my e-commerce class,
I asked them to bring in an example of a website
that they think probably people haven't heard much about,
but that's a good example of a website
that they like, they find useful,
they find that they'd like to share
with the rest of the class.
And tell the class why this is a good website.
It also opens the class up for the first real class period.
[MUSIC PLAYING]