I am putting the finishing touches on my syllabus for Fall 2024 but I am lost. I usually spend a lot of time creating beautiful syllabi with lots of graphics and colors, inviting students on a learning journey with a community of learners. My syllabus is “fluid” and changeable, it changes as I discover new things I want to explore and as I deepen my understanding and curiosity. I am lucky that a syllabus does not have to be a legal contract of terms of use, although certain technical things are encouraged.
But the question is, if students are going to look at it once and then default to their to-do list, is it worth it?
Until Spring 2024, I did not use Canvas, my campus’s learning management system. This decision had more to do with student-centeredness and diversity, student power and choice, not forced compliance. (My classes are ungraded and active and participatory.) Canvas seemed to me to be the most school-like aspect of college: everything self-contained, disconnected (alienated) from the world, externally imposed, filled with points, metrics, and tasks, like a game in a box. (I recognize the privilege of making this decision; on many campuses, faculty are mandated to use an LMS.)
Students were writing our evaluations and speaking out loud of their confusion as to why the course wasn't on Canvas. I noticed that many of them had Canvas open on their laptops as they were working. I wondered if there was some way I could minimize my use of Canvas and make things a little easier for my students.
So I reached out to ask how I could use Canvas in my ungraded classes. Several faculty members from around the country responded. One even sent me a video instruction and syllabus with student annotations explaining his or her version of Canvas. Another connected with me over Zoom to show me how to configure Canvas.
I also reached out to my students for the Fall 2023 semester. It was during winter break, so I didn't know if they were checking their emails, because I knew that students often don't check their emails when they don't have to. One student responded. She and I Zoomed for 30 minutes. I asked her if she could show me her screen and explain what Canvas looked like from her perspective.
I wanted to know what it was like from the students' point of view, or from “the locals' point of view.” Since I'm an anthropologist, this is actually ethnography. As American anthropologist Clifford Geertz put it in his famous paper on cockfighting in Bali, to quote Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, I wanted to know what it was like.
So the student showed me the screen, and it was overwhelming. And wow, it was enlightening.
She had a Canvas site for every course, every lab, every study abroad prep course. Each Canvas site had multiple tabs, but they weren't all the same, and not every faculty member used the LMS the same way. So she defaulted to the calendar and a list of to-do items. I asked her to show me courses that she thought were well-organized and courses that she thought were not. When I asked her why, she said she had a hard time finding the latter. She's a very good student and said her way of doing things is to download the syllabi of every class and use the dashboard and calendar.
So when we were in the “disorganized” class, I asked her about all the tabs on the left and what they were. I specifically asked her what the Modules tab was. I had already started my course (not entirely sure if I was going to go ahead with it) and was having trouble integrating the Modules tab with the Assignments tab. In fact, it worked for one course but not the other. She said she had no idea, because she had never seen the Modules tab. When she opened the Modules tab, the entire course was laid out there. It was beautifully created and well-crafted with organization and padding, and everything was there: assignments, readings, guidelines, rubrics, etc. Everything was perfectly organized.
But this student, a brilliant student by any standard, never referenced it, and I can see why.
It all feels so overwhelming. We understand the desire for easy access to to-do lists, dashboards, and calendars. Why read a long, boring syllabus or a beautiful syllabus when you can easily list out your tasks for the day in little chunks in Canvas?
Given the dominance of LMS, I realize that schooling as a whole is now one big to-do list.
Requirements, credits, allocations, majors, minors, prerequisites – that's been the case for a while, but that's at a structural level.
This is the level of day-to-day, hour-to-hour activity. Life is very busy for many students as they have many other competing responsibilities: work, family, medical arrangements, clubs, sports, social life, etc. That's why it's so useful to have everything in one big, organized, centralized to-do list.
But if college life is just a big to-do list, where is the adventure? Where is the joy? Where is the meaning?
In my classes, I try hard to alert my students to the fact that learning can be an adventure, fun, joyful, meaningful, and attainable.
I've written before about school, or college, as a game, where everything is self-contained in a box, even the batteries. My new book is about Schoolism: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic and Joyful Learningalso speaks the same way.
There are signs around my university that say “I can do hard things.” But I don't emphasize the hardness in my classes. It's everywhere. Rigor. Standards. Grading criteria.
I am trying to invite, invite, and welcome my students into a community of learners engaged in the adventure of learning. But my months with Canvas have shown me how tricky that mindset is: at what point will the engagement be complete, and by when? When will the window of delight open and close?
I mentioned this to two colleagues and they both said, “You can get a student view in Canvas,” and I replied, “Yes you can, but only for certain items.”
Now that I'm starting to see the bigger picture from the student's perspective, I see more clearly how counterproductive this whole school enterprise is. Just as I realized 10 years ago that you can't give grades by telling students “don't worry about grades,” I can't tell students to “make learning an end in itself” and “be independent learners” and then lament the fact that they try to take shortcuts to get a grade. Maybe I'll understand why some students love learning but hate school.
And I keep this challenge in mind as I return to the task of preparing a course map that is as simple and as inspiring as possible.