Guide to Academic Criteria
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The most important of these are the most difficult to define. They include such qualities as the seriousness of academic intention; originality in the approach to the subject; suitability of the subject for a course in Yale College; coherence of the syllabus; and evidence of the instructor's competence, creativity, intelligence and pedagogical skill. Each College has its own priorities and procedures for screening proposals and choosing the instructors it wants to interview; each College also rightly has its own constituencies and interests to consider in selecting its seminars. Final choices are often based on the following criteria:
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Related Documents |
- Equivalence of Workload
The amount of work required in a College Seminar should be comparable to a course offered in the regular curriculum. What constitutes an appropriate workload varies, of course, from discipline to discipline. While students in a history or literature course would generally be expected to read approximately the equivalent of a book a week (150 to 200 pages of other materials), students in a physics or philosophy course might be equally taxed by a reading assignment of twenty pages of complex material. Weighted percentages of the various requirements should be included. - Grading
An instructor must have a well-defined method of evaluating student performance. This must include at least one piece of graded work to be completed before midterm, and a substantial essay, project, or final exam at the end of the term. The norm for written work is 18 to 22 pages over the course of the term. Writing courses require substantially more than this. (Note especially that the Course of Study Committee requires any course offered in Yale College to include an exercise that is evaluated before midterm, so that every student will have an idea by that time of his or her standing in the course.) - Judicious Use of Student Presentations and Oral Reports
While oral reports and student presentations are recognized as valuable tools of learning, student evaluations of past seminars suggest that there are certain perils inherent in their use. Students have complained that their peers are sometimes unprepared and are allowed to ramble on at length without saying anything useful; that students are not given sufficient guidance in choosing and delimiting their topics; that students sometimes lack sufficient mastery of the material to present it adequately; that teachers fail to step in and redirect the class session when an oral report has bogged down; and finally, that some instructors, in effect, let student reports do their teaching for them. Teachers have also sometimes complained that students may fail to show up for a scheduled presentation, thus forcing a sudden change in the entire class plan for a given meeting. Instructors are advised to use student presentations carefully and to take steps (such as requiring preliminary drafts or preparatory conferences) to ensure that students are adequately prepared. - Student Evaluations of Previous Seminars Taught by the Same Instructor
At the conclusion of every College Seminar, students are asked to evaluate both the design of the course and the instructor's teaching (see "Student Evaluations" below.) If a potential instructor has taught a College Seminar previously, student evaluations should be revised and reported to your committee before interviewing the instructor. If the evaluations suggest problems with the course's design or with the instructor's skill in teaching, be prepared to address these problems tactfully, but directly, in your interview. - Completeness of Proposals
See Application Information and Procedures
