Sample Text to Outline First-Year Seminar Program Objectives
in the Course Outline

Because this is a seminar course, it is very different in both organization and design than most of your other courses. The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has defined the following program objectives towards which, each in their own way, all First Year Seminars (FYS) must strive:

1. The seminar must be interactive, and must provide frequent and early evaluation. This explains the shift from the lecture/longer paper/examination format of the lecture course to the discussion/frequent and shorter assignment format of the FYS. You will spend more time interacting with your classmates and with me (participating in class, and discussing and writing about ideas as they come up), than listening to lectures and reading lengthy texts. In this way I can become more aware of your academic strengths and needs. Through reading your work and participating in discussions with you, I can hopefully provide on-going feedback directed towards your particular needs. You should therefore feel free to ask questions in class, on the newsgroup, or in out-of class meetings, and to take advantage of the university's concern with your personal learning goals and your academic development.

2. The FYS instructor must provide extensive consultation, advising and mentoring not only with regard to this course, but also, if you wish, regarding your work in other courses, and your institutional concerns. What this means is that as an FYS instructor, I have been asked to see you as a whole person, with concerns that stem from this course, and from the rest of your life as well. My job is to help you (if you ask) when it falls within my sphere of action and expertise, and to advise you of the campus organizations and services which match up with your particular areas of concern.

3. The seminar must focus on close analysis of texts (of all kinds). This explains the more in-depth study of a relatively small body of knowledge as compared to the vast scope of most first year survey courses. We will concentrate on developing the critical reading, thinking and writing skills that TAs and faculty members often assume you have, so we will spend a longer time digesting, questioning, and ‘doing things' with shorter texts, with the goal of building these critical skills which have often been left to chance as far as instruction goes, yet are so essential to present and future academic success.

4. The seminar will help students learn to work in groups/as teams in and out of class, and to benefit from peer interaction in a ‘social and intellectual home'. Group and teamwork skills are important in both the academic and work worlds, and this seminar has the goal of helping you develop or master skills in this area. You will be expected to get and to give much more collegial support within this class community than in your larger classes, and we will experiment with a variety of approaches to partner and group work, in order to achieve these ends. If your experiences with groupwork have not been satisfactory, our aim is to put those experiences in the past.

5. The seminar will help students integrate their learning via a culminating project/essay with careful guidance through the phases of development. What this means is that the assignments I ask you to undertake should be as building blocks of a process, leading to the accomplishment of authentic academic/real world tasks. Having completed the tasks, you will have acquired, along with a range of skills, the ability to recognize these processes and accomplish these tasks in your future academic and work life. As well, you will then be ready to undertake similar, perhaps more difficult (although often, simply longer) tasks as they arise. Your annotated bibliography in the first term, and your research project in the second term have been conceived to fulfill this integrating function.

So what does all this mean for you? First, this will probably be the smallest class you will attend this year. Second, you will spend less time listening to lectures and more time doing and discussing research (that's why it's called a seminar). Third, you will have more expected of you week-to-week than is traditional in other courses where there is often just a mid-term and final exam or major paper. Fourth, because this is a smaller, seminar class, you will get more personal support from me, your instructor, in meeting your learning goals in the seminar. Finally, you will do a lot of your work with other students, including a group presentation in the second semester. I hope that this will be one of the most engaging and memorable courses you will take at Carleton. At the very least, it will better prepare you for the years ahead in terms of research, writing and critical thinking.

(This text has been modified from one originally written by Dr. Tim Pychyl, Department of Psychology.)