Monday 7 Mar 2010

New Series—Development of Courses—Over 3 Decades

Introduction To Series

            At Fuller, during my tenure here, professors were assigned to teach six courses per year as the normal load.

           New professors who come on board, particularly younger ones, have quite a roe to hoe! Fairly rapidly they have to develop six courses. Now for the most part, younger professors coming on board are not assigned required courses (that is, courses that students must take as part of some program). That means the courses, themselves, must draw students. And during my time, a class would not go unless it had 15 students. So, there is a lot of pressure to develop good courses fast.

            Usually it takes 7-10 years for a young teacher to establish a reputation and to develop courses that folks want to take.  Sometimes a course will develop much faster than you might expect.

            Over the years I have developed about 10 different courses. Some of these were dropped for various reasons. Some were passed on to others to teach. But specifically, in this series, I am going to talk about my best courses and how they fared over the 3 decades of my teaching. For each decade I will discuss the top 3 classes that developed and try to ascertain why they were tops.

So Part I of the Series talks about Decade 1—The 80s and the top three courses: 1. ML560 Change Dynamics; 2. ML540 Leadership Training Models; 3. ML501 Emerging Leaders.

Part II of the Series will talk about Decade 2—The 90s and the top three courses: 1. ML530 Life Long Development; 2. ML523 Mentoring; 3. ML521 Developing Leadership Giftedness;

Part III of the Series will talk about Decade 3—2000-2010: 1. ML530 Life Long Development; 2. ML523 Mentoring; 3. ML524 Focused Lives; 4. The Resurgence of ML540 Leadership Training Models.

I will also mention along the way the development of the ML534 Value Based Leadership O.T .course and the ML536 Value Based Leadership N.T.  courses. I had such high hopes for these two courses. They have not developed up to the potential I had for them. Why not? I will try to evaluate this.

In each part of the series, for each course talked about, I will give the Expanded Course Description (ECD).

You can download the ECDs.

Occasionally, I will give a syllabus (these usually range from 15 to 20 pages in length) that you can download.

For a teacher, competency does not usually come very fast. It takes time to develop an impactful course.

Blessings,  as You patiently Wait For Competent Ministry

Bobby Clinton