Section 7.2 Personalizing a course within prescribed curriculum
Faculty assignments to teach a course usually were for three years. Initially most new faculty members tried to replicate what the prior instructor had done in teaching the content, while adding some personal touches. One described this process as follows:
I definitely went in with the attitude that at least in my first two years of teaching the paradigms, I was going to try to replicate as best I could exactly; I did not make any concerted effort to try to change anything; there were of course subtle things, of which homework questions I chose, but I wasn't going to develop a lot of things from scratch. I knew that there had been a lot of effort invested in this...at least in terms of content;
There are lots of individual flares I add to my course, I like to start the class with some music or short videos to set the tone, or other weird things that I do, I always put my notes on line, I scan them afterwards, and little things that I do on my websites constructed differently...
Setting the tone of a class session with music or videos is one way this faculty member chose to personalize a course with prescribed content.