Work in Progress
This section is currently being written or undergoing major revision.
There is an example syllabus containing the core information necessary for running the course at UC Berkeley. It refers to several university specific policies that may not apply at other colleges. It also doesn't have any due dates or other information that needs to be updated every term. The example syllabus with placeholders for all those details can be found here.
Weekly Schedule
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The core of the class is the collective learning in the discussion sections. It's important that as many of the students as possible watch the lectures before section so that all the students can start on the same page and elevate each other in their discussions.
Each week covers two main topics. These are presented in a "flipped classroom" format where the students are first exposed to the content via series of prerecorded lectures. The students then wrestle with the material more directly in discussion sections. These force the students to engage in active learning through a series of planned discussions and other activities that reveal new sides to the material not covered in the lectures. Each week closes with a "plenary" session where professors from different fields engage with the each other and the students in a more freeform discussion. The plenaries act as the capstone of the week, resolving several of the activities and drawing connections between the course topics as well as other disciplines.
Berkeley Weekly Schedule
The version of the course taught at UC Berkeley is the most "comprehensive." It presents the lectures with an online tool called PlayPosit. It has two discussion sections referred to as "labscussion" sections. The labscussions are lead by graduate student instructors and the plenaries are run by three professors from philosophy, social science, and the natural sciences.
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Other Weekly Schedule Variants
It may not always be possible to acquire the full course staff and number of instruction hours to needed to implement the Berkeley version of the course. There are several relatively simple changes that can be made to the course structure to accommodate this.
Less Class Time
Lots of universities offer only a handful of class schedule formats that typically add up to roughly three hours of instruction time. Given the choice of three 1 hour classes, two 1.5 hour classes, or one 3 hour class, it's easiest to adjust the course content to the two 1.5 hour classes that are primarily discussion based and not having a separate plenary session. Many of the discussions of held during section can be easily adjusted to be run by groups of professors from different fields instead of graduate student instructors.
Fewer Professors
The UC Irvine variant of the course has been run with only one professor. The Harvard version has been run with two.
Although the course benefits from the back-and-forth of a teaching staff from a diverse set of disciplines, it can be run by one professor as well. In these cases, it is okay to remove the separate plenary session and just have the professor run the discussion sections.
No Flipped Classroom
If you're unable to offer a flipped version of the course, you'll have to find some other way to introduce the content for the first time. This has most often been done with traditional lectures in place of the prerecorded ones. These can either be done as separate class periods from the discussion sections or by combining them. In the latter case, you'll have to pick and choose which activities from the discussion sections to keep to accommodate the reduced classroom instruction time.
Projects
At UC Berkeley, the course is run with two projects. The first is due just before spring break (between weeks 10 and 11). The second is due at the end of the term.
Project 1
The first project is a short report of 2000 words or less analyzing and contrasting three news/academic articles on the same topic. It is not an essay. Instead, it's more of a report/case study about how the ideas of this course disseminate in media.
Project 2
The second project involves applying the topics of the course to solve some problem. Each student creates a poster on a chosen topic with the aim of making a decision on some practical question. The question may be big or small, personal or societal, etc. At the end of the course, there is an optional poster presentation session held for extra credit.
Quizzes and Exams
The UC Berkeley version of the course has 6 in-person quizzes spread throughout the semester as well as a final exam at end of the term. Practice quiz questions are released ahead of time so that the students know what sort of misconception the questions are aiming to get at. A bank of previously used quiz and exam questions is available here.
Grading
At UC Berkeley, the different components of the course are weighted as per the following table in determining students' grades.
| Type of Assessment | Percent of Final Grade |
|---|---|
| Project 1 | 12% |
| Project 2 | 15% |
| Final Exam | 19% |
| Quizzes | 20% |
| Discussion section participation | 18% |
| Watching online lectures prior to class | 16% |