Kelly K. Ferguson, "Cribbing Palpatine’s Syllabus: Or, What Professoring for the Evil Empire Taught Me About Instructional Design" (Assay 7.2)

ASSAY: A JOURNAL OF NONFICTION STUDIES
7.2

Kelly K. Ferguson

Cribbing Palpatine’s Syllabus:
Or, What Professoring for the Evil Empire Taught Me
About Instructional Design

Objectives

By the end of this essay you will be able to:

Implement corporate structure to your creative writing syllabus.
Coax the cringing tendrils of your soul as you apply Bloom’s Taxonomy of Active Verbs and bullet points.
Harness The Force so you can flip through the air with a lightsaber.

Overview

It was August 2020 and my university (like many) decided to move all face-to-face courses completely online.

Assistance came in the form of online instructional design training. An onslaught of videos delivered a crash course in online pedagogy (Have you tried experiential learning? Active learning? Inclusivity?) and drive-by training in apps which might be great, but what if they weren’t, and then I lost all that time.

I’ll admit, I’ve always wondered why public school teachers receive all this training in pedagogy and classroom management, while it’s assumed college professors will insert some Matrix-like chip when the time comes. All I could think during the series of well-intentioned videos and PowerPoints was, “Too much, too late.” How could we possibly digest and apply all this theory in a week? I admit, I signed up for these modules hoping someone would finally tell me what buttons to push.

I took the checks to offset my furlough, but my course shell remained blank. I had ten years invested in a classroom—exercises, talks, activities, group work— that relied upon in-person instruction. I counted on face-to-face for wiggle room, improv, sheep herding, and accountability.

Now my net was gone.

Hey, Blackboard, I just wanted to send an email!

Confession: My teaching evaluations since time immemorial (i.e., that first Freshman Composition course) consistently report that I’m knowledgeable, creative, delightful and “probably” a nice person but—disorganized.

More than most, perhaps, I needed a syllabus that would carve the dark matter of cyberspace into manageable chunks. Keep my students on track. Keep me on track.

Which got me thinking: didn’t I already have a syllabus like that?

In a former life, I worked a side hustle adjuncting for a corporate online university we’ll call Evil Empire University. This job wasn’t my proudest moment. EEU abuses open enrollment and predatory student loan practices. Most students don’t finish the non-transferable courses, much less the questionable degree. In my defense, my fellow instructors and I were Finns in this Star Wars analogy, more victim than perpetrator, struggling for a measly wage.

Corporate? For sure. Morally bankrupt? Possibly. Soul-eating? Ask the black helmet that shields my volcano-crisped face.

On the other hand, as a for-profit university, EUU is legally obligated to maintain accreditation. They are held accountable for their pedagogy in ways non-profits are not. The course I taught, and the syllabus, had been created by professional educators and instructional designers. Their goal: keep students enrolled and ensure annual recertification.

From what I could remember, the course was very — organized. Was there a way, perhaps, that I could tap into the Dark Side but keep my humanity?

Somewhere, in a dusty Dropbox crypt, I found my old business communication syllabus, a 34-page document complete with plans for a Death Star. Admittedly, the content of the course was horrifying as I remembered —vacuous assignments just professional enough to keep the student loan checks coming.

But the structure? So tidy Marie Kondo could bounce a quarter off it. All the theory espoused by instructional designers had been translated into a functioning syllabus. I excised this scaffold and used it to build my own.

Now What?

As you (my audience of A+ professors) have no doubt figured by now, my conceit is to model how a creative type can take corporate structure and adapt it, maybe even inject a little personality. If anything, I believe that this Year of Online will show that an A.I. can’t replace the professor. Students benefit from our quirks, our personalities, our life experience.

But that quirk has to translate into an online format. And while pedagogical theory is great, EEU understood that if you’re going to manage thousands of adjuncts, sometimes you have put aside the Paulo Freire and tell them what buttons to push.

For the rest of the essay, I’ll list the course design principles I found useful.

Note: EEU’s syllabus was designed for an online class that is completely asynchronous, which is how I taught this past fall. The course I taught was Magazine Feature Writing. My course software was Blackboard and Microsoft Teams.

A Note About Style (I'm looking at you, academia)

Write short, direct sentences
Create short paragraphs
Boldface subheadings
(Ab)use bullet points.

Have a Section in Your Syllabus Called "How to Go to Class"

This document is a map to the course shell that explains to your students the logistics.

This semester I went hybrid, adding a weekly in person course meeting.

The First Week

is especially critical. Students need to post something, and you need to respond personally, even if it’s just a cursory, “Hi! Now, young Skywalker, you will die.” I’m sure many of you have creative and exciting ways that are more engaging than the Bio Thread I created in the discussion board. The gist of the situation is to spark that engagement ASAP.

The Seven-Day Week is the Foundation

Online courses can feel like Norwegian winter — where day and night become arbitrary measures. Think of weekly structure as a sort of hygge; structure provides comfort.

Weekly Folders

Course materials are made available Sunday for the start of the week on Monday. Each week has a topic, and the course objectives are listed in, that’s right, bullet points.

For assignments that take more than one week, you can break your topics down into subtopics.

ïWeek Seven: Turn a Potential Jedi to the Dark Side | Determine Your Mark
ïWeek Eight: Turn a Potential Jedi to the Dark Side | Manipulation through Mindfucking

Here’s an example of my weekly course folders. I cringed a little at my use of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Active Verbs, but once I tried them on, they weren’t so bad.

Exclamation Points!

Corny, but online they feel like a lifeline! Like emojis. 🙂

Weekly Overview

Each week post an overview detailing that week’s topic, course objectives, readings, and homework. Write the overview in the tone of a letter.

For visual consistency at the top of the page, write, “Welcome to Week ____!”

Write direct sentences such as, “This week we will…” If the poet in you is cringing over the pedantry, think of this pattern as anaphora.

To comfort my creative self, I color-coded each week. Last semester I went with the Fargo palette.

Use bullet points for the objectives up top.

Use bullet points at the end to list everything due that week and Bold important stuff. I avoid red, though. Feels mean. Except for deadlines. But then I still use brick red instead of danger red.

Put the links to discussion boards and assignment uploads in the weekly module. In short, everything the student needs should be covered in the overview, and included in the weekly module. I’ll admit, as a person who went to school back when a syllabus was one page of purple mimeograph paper, I experience moments of grumpiness, but I’ve learned to adapt. (Cut because I make this same observation in “outcomes: me.”)

Have Consistent Due Dates

Discussion questions are always due the same day of the week. Students then have a week to give two replies.

Written assignments are also always due the same day of the week. (A different day from the discussion post due dates).

Pick a Monday. Or a Wednesday. Whatever the day. Make it the same day.

Use Consistent Terminology

Think of it as syllabus worldbuilding! Are you squashing the Rebel Alliance or the Rebel Brigade? Keep in mind stormtroopers are easily confused. They need explicit direction or they will scurry in circles accidentally shooting one another. I always put all readings, links, craft talks, podcasts, whatever, in the “Course Materials” folder. And I always call it the “Course Materials” folder.

This same folder appears every week. Since you don’t teach for EEU, you can call course materials whatever you like. The main idea, is that you keep the terms consistent.

Online Attendance

If a student isn’t logging in, there is a 99% chance they will email you that last week with 5% of the work completed, wondering if there is “anything they can do.”

For EEU, students had to post a minimum of twice a week on two different days. As instructors, we had to post online a minimum of four times a week. If we failed, a dark lord senses a disturbance and squeezed our windpipes.

Discussion questions and assignments with staggered due dates should do the trick. I recently learned my course management software can track engagement, so that’s another tool.

Keep in mind students also have access to the Force, and they can feel it when a professor isn’t active in the forums.

Online Office Hours

EEU made us keep online hours for two hours every week (Sunday nights).

Last semester, I streamed a videoconference channel open to students in the course. When I logged in, I would post something apropos to the week in the chat. For instance, “I’m here in case anyone wants to brainstorm pitches!”

This semester, I changed my terminology from “Office Hours” to “Drop In Hours” because of a pedagogy tip I gleaned from this Twitter thread.

For shyer types, I promised rapid-fire turnaround email.

Rubrics

Naturally, EEU was all about the rubrics.

Full disclosure: I failed to use rubrics. Sometimes, we don’t have the energy to implement every best practice.

Rebel Alliance

To inject a little personality, I made weekly five-minute videos, which I would describe as Cyndi Lauper keeps a Captain’s Log.

I was stuck with Teams, which at the time didn’t have breakout groups, so I organized small group videoconference workshops for project drafts.

These breaks from protocol were a risk, a break in my facade of Most Organized Professor Ever, but I wanted to prove (or try, at least) that I can’t be replaced by a droid with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s voice. (Although—don’t you want to take that course?).

I was admittedly goofy in these videos, my pride a burnt offering to the gods of pandemic morale.

Outcomes for Me

Online course planning is a ton of prep. A ton of prep. OMG so much prep. For it to work, you have to be 2-3 weeks ahead of the students.

The good news? I’m teaching the same course this semester and I have all these weekly folders and materials ready to go. And when we return to face-to-face, I dare say I will have benefitted from all this structure.

I’ll admit that succumbing to the regimentation of bullet points, folders, and active verb won me over in the end. With the consistent structure and deadlines in red in at least three places, I had way fewer petty student emails. Once I return to in-person, I plan on keeping these structures in place. I have found, for instance, that graded online discussion forums mean everyone participates, not just the extroverts.

This semester, with my folders in place, I have more energy to focus on student feedback and big picture pedagogy, such as decolonizing my syllabus. Unlike teaching for EEU, I have complete freedom to choose all my readings, discussion questions, assignments, and assessment methods. But I’m also keeping much of what I put together the same, in the interest of mental health for we know, teaching can be the job that never ends.

Outcomes for Students

My best students generated the highest percentage of publishable writing I’ve ever had for this course, which you can read here and here.

I also had the highest percentage of students who failed; online learning isn’t for everyone. These failures triggered a guilt reminiscent of my EEU days, that I’d been complicit in a capitalist machine more about milking tuition money than education.

Parting Thoughts

It’s a risk, harnessing the dark side, but in the end, I kept my soul and was allowed to attend the Ewok dance party as a Force ghost.

And what of my course evaluations? Did adopting the corporate machinations of pedagogy win me favor in the court of popular opinion? Did my students express their gratitude over how I was oh-so organized during These Unprecedented Times? Did I strut down an aisle to a beaming Princess Leia so I could receive my due reward?

I have no idea. I’ve been too terrified to look.

Dr. Kelly K. Ferguson is the author of My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself (Press 53). Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, mental_floss magazine, and other publications. In the past ten years she has moved from southern Louisiana to southern Ohio back to southern Louisiana to southern Utah back to southern Ohio, where she is Assistant Professor of Magazine Media in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.

Sarah Einstein
How to Structure an Online Week in a
Creative Writing Workshop
In the Classroom
March 11, 2020

Karen Babine
Discussion Board Rubrics
In the Classroom
March 25, 2020

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