Teaching Honors Discovery Seminar
COURSE OVERVIEW AND INFORMATION FOR FACULTY INTERESTED IN TEACHING HONORS 391AH
Course Description
This one-credit seminar-style course meets once a week for 50 minutes and is required of all Commonwealth Honors College students. Every section is open to honors students of any major. Advanced knowledge of the topic should not be necessary.
Enrollment in Honors 391AH sections is limited to 15.
Compensation
Faculty teaching these seminars will receive a stipend of $2375.
- Full-time faculty have the option to choose between receiving Faculty Retention Funds (Fund 52341) OR Additional Compensation.
- Faculty are responsible for setting up this fund type with their department finance contact and providing this information to CHC if choosing to receive faculty retention funds.
- Faculty emeriti and part-time faculty will be paid directly by Commonwealth Honors College.
- Faculty who are not full-time should state in which unit of the university and how many courses they will be teaching during the academic year.
- All Faculty also have the option of donating the stipend to the Commonwealth Honors College student research grant program.
Goals
Honors 391AH is intended to inspire a love of learning and to help prepare students with skills necessary for the completion of honors theses and the professional workplace. It is also designed to facilitate contact between Commonwealth Honors College students and departmental faculty in a small, seminar-style setting and to provide an intellectually stimulating, cross-disciplinary experience for both the faculty and students involved.
Curriculum Overview
The subject matter of each section is chosen by its instructor. There is no restriction on the field or topic around which the course is centered, but all courses should be accessible to students from all majors; no advanced knowledge should be required.
Preference will be given to courses that incorporate specific skills into the curriculum that will help prepare students for the senior thesis or project. These include writing in general but also may include writing abstracts and literature reviews, competence in research, the definition of a research question, computer literacy in presenting research results and public speaking.
The point of these courses is to allow faculty members to create short, compelling courses in areas of personal interest to them and to teach courses they have always wanted to teach while helping students hone the skills necessary for Honors thesis work.
Follow this link for examples of courses currently being offered.
Course Content
Thesis Preparation
Note that this course is part of the preparation for students to do an Honors Thesis, which is required of all CHC students entering as of September 2018.
Submissions for this RFP will be ranked according to the components of thesis skills developed in the class as well as the completeness of the description of the content of the class to be offered. Not all need to be included, but at least two or three should be described in the application and incorporated into the syllabus.
Components of thesis skills include
- Writing assignments closely commented upon by the faculty member for grammar, clarity of argument, expression, and formatting.
- Revision of drafts to follow the instructor’s suggestions and directions.
- Compiling a bibliography and correctly referencing sources in the text of a paper.
- Using appropriate sources of information for research, including where appropriate UMass librarians.
- Writing a literature review.
- Using discipline-appropriate forms of presentation, for example, tables, graphs, pictures, and maps.
Required Items for Syllabus
The following paragraphs must appear in the syllabus for your section:
- Attendance Policy
- Exam conflicts policy
- Plagiarism Policy
- UMass Academic Honesty Statement
- Accommodation Statement
Please refer to this syllabus template as an example.
Other Important Honors Information
Commonwealth Honors College Class Profile
University Analytics and Institutional Research (UAIR) maintains statistics on students who participate in Commonwealth Honors College. Visit UAIR for information about entering and continuing CHC students.
Teaching Honors
Honors pedagogy is always evolving and looks much different in different contexts depending on the goals of different faculty and institutions. Honors courses across the country vary widely in their learning outcomes and designs. The National Collegiate Honors Council's monograph, Inspiring Exemplary Teaching and Learning: Perspectives on Teaching Academically Talented College Students points out several common themes in the following quote.
"One is the groundswell of interest in reflective practice and all of its implications: critical thinking, problem-solving, and ethical and moral reasoning. A second is the emphasis on faculty development and pedagogical innovation and creativity ... Curricular, program, and institutional reform is a third ... The compelling power of integrative learning is another: collaborative learning, cooperative learning, team-based approaches, interdisciplinarity, and synthesis of knowledge..." (Clark and Zubizaretta)
HONORS TEACHING LINKS
What is Honors? - National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC)
Community or Contact Zone? Deconstructing an Honors Classroom by Phyllis Surrency and Mary Marwitz
Logistical FAQs
USEFUL LINKS
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The Honors Research Guide is the gateway to all the online research tools developed for Honors 391AH, including information about evaluating the reliability of web sources, a guide to making effective posters, and tips on how to avoid plagiarism.
The Honors website News page announces events of interest to the College and community. It can be accessed from the front page of the Commonwealth Honors College web site and is frequently updated, so again please check the site and encourage your students to check it too.
ENROLLMENT
Where do I get my SPIRE roster?
All instructors have SPIRE access, through an account and password issued by OIT. (If you have not received, or have lost or forgotten your account name and password, OIT staff in A107 Lederle will issue you a new one. Just be sure to bring along a valid ID.) Log on to SPIRE and click on "Class Management" in the drop-down menu to the left of the screen, then on "Class Rosters" and the appropriate term.
How do I know who is enrolled in my class?
Your SPIRE roster contains the names of students officially registered for your class.
What if a student is present in my class but not on my roster?
If any students are present in your class but missing from your roster, make sure they are in fact registered for your class (and not another). If they are not on your roster but wish to enter your class now, if you wish, you may add them to your section as long as they have met the prerequisite. To add students to your section, submit their names—along with their student ID number (absolutely essential) and class year -- by email.
How and when do I turn in my final grades?
Instructors enter their own grades directly through SPIRE at the end of the regular academic semester. Only at that time does SPIRE accept grades, again through "Class Management" and then "Record Grades" for the appropriate term.
AUDIO-VIDEO EQUIPMENT
Most sections of Honors 391AH are scheduled in AV-equipped "smart" classrooms.
For technical questions and issues, including more information on classroom technology or multimedia equipment loan and support, please contact Classroom Technology Services (CTS).
CTS, in Dickinson, Room 1(413-545-5768), will deliver TVs, DVDs, VCRs, data projectors, video recording equipment, tape/CD players, etc., to classrooms during regular daytime class hours. (No laptops are available through CTS.) For evening classes, instructors may pick up equipment from CTS before 4:30 p.m.; equipment must be returned to CTS by 9:00 a.m. the following morning.
COURSE AND INSTRUCTOR EVALUATIONS
Course evaluations are completed online by the students. Notification is emailed to the students approximately two weeks before the end of the semester. Additional information for instructors is available online.
ENCOURAGING STUDENT RESPONSE
The primary challenge with online survey administration is continuing to obtain appropriate response rates. Instructors play a critical role in this effort. When students believe that their opinions matter to the instructor, the department, and to the campus, they are more likely to participate.
Many instructors ask students to complete their surveys during class using their laptop, phone, or tablet. Additional suggestions for encouraging student response to course surveys can be found online.
