I fully or partially wrote 5 year revisions for six courses in two divisions when the new system was first put into operation, and found the new system much easier than the previous one.
Will you be doing a 5 year revision, or just giving feedback?
If you are Part Time, you might need to be,
(you wrote the original curriculum or there are no full time faculty in the department you teach in)
or want to be the person to do the revision,
or might want to be giving feedback,
and in the case of many full time faculty teaching the same course
you might not be assigned the revision but would like to give feedback,
so looking at the current curriculum for each class you teach or might teach would be wise.
(Over 300 classes needed a revision in early 2024, including over 25 in Bio Hlth, over 45 in KNES and over 70 in Social Sciences
If the required revisions are not completed the class disappears.
Yup, you guessed it, that HAS HAPPENED before.
Whether you are assigned a revision,
or just might want to give feedback,
to see what the current curriculum is go to http://ecms.deanza.edu/deptoutlinespublic.html
(Use the down arrow to Select Department.)
Having your Course Outline(s)- current curriculum – open on another computer tab while reading this next section could be useful.
When you find your current Course Outline (current curriculum), I suggest you first take a look at:
VII. Methods of Instruction
VIII. Methods of Evaluating Objectives
For many classes, you will likely continue to use what is currently in these sections.
IF you need to change anything in these sections,
to find proper verbiage go to http://dilbert.fhda.edu/curriculum/
on the left hand side, go to Sample Outlines, then to
VI, VII, VIII Alignment
Why would you need to change anything? Example: in the case of the HLTH57A Red Cross First Aid certification class I revised recently, the Red Cross had changed the program in major ways. Some skills had been deleted from the Red Cross requirements for certification and new ones had been added, including First Aid for Opioid Overdose.
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When you take a look in the current Course Outline at:
III. Essential Student Materials
None
IV. Essential College Facilities
None
You may have forgotten why your course outline says NONE.
When you are in working on the revision, at many listings, if you click to the right of the title,
on the three tiny white dots in the gray oval,
an explanation of what is needed appears:
for example, at Essential Student Materials:
List only special-purpose materials essential to the successful completion of the course by the student, otherwise state “None.”
OR at Essential College Facilities
List only special-purpose facilities essential to the classroom or the type of classroom required, otherwise state “None.”
Safety issues and required safety goggles, safety glasses are essential and should be mentioned.
Have standards changed? Is “CAD computer laboratory,”
“Computer laboratory with Visual Basic .NET Integrated Development Environment,”
“Access to a computer running the UNIX/LINUX operating system,”
“Access to a computer laboratory with Java and C++ compilers available,”
“32GB Memory Card class 10 SDHC”
still the most up to date you need?
(Up until very recently, a De Anza webpage said: “Our lab is equipped with an instructor station and 24 Mac computers that are capable of running both the OS X and Windows 7 operating system.”)
For a Nursing class:
III. Essential Student Materials
Student uniform including ID badge
Transportation to clinical sites
Stethoscope, scissors and hemostat
Current CPR certification for health care professionals
Current physical examination with updated immunizations
Current background check and drug testing
Watch with second hand
IV. Essential College Facilities
Skills laboratory equipped with supplies and equipment for practice and demonstrations;
A current Foothill-De Anza Community College District contract with each affiliating clinical facility on file with the District Office
For a Chemistry class:
III. Essential Student Materials
Safety goggles
IV. Essential College Facilities
Fully equipped chemical laboratory including, at a minimum, the following: consumable chemicals, chemical balances, glassware, molecular models, melting point apparatus, laptops with data acquisition modules, fume hoods, chemical disposal facilities, lockable student storage areas, periodic tables, and laboratory technician. Lecture room with a periodic table.
For an Auto Tech class:
III. Essential Student Materials
Safety glasses for lab assignments/worksheets
IV. Essential College Facilities
Automotive technology laboratory with “Alldata” and “Mitchell on-demand” electronic information systems.
For a Dance class:
III. Essential Student Materials
Leotard, tights, and ballet shoes
IV. Essential College Facilities
Dance studio, media playback and projection facilities
For an Arts class:
III. Essential Student Materials
Oil paint media, variety of scrub brushes, oil paints, tote box, paper palettes, metal containers, canvas, stretcher bar materials, appropriate attire
IV. Essential College Facilities
Painting studio, easels, stools, audio-visual facilities, storage racks, lockers, metal locker for storage of solvents. Shop facility with appropriate supervision.
Look in the current Course Outline at IX. Texts and Supporting References
and see if the current list is years-out-of-date,
and start gathering the newer texts info (title, author(s), publisher, copyright date and ISBN)
into a document you can copy and paste from.
Or add a new reference you use.
When I did the recent 5 year review the current curriculum for HLTH57A included:
American Red Cross “Wilderness and Remote First Aid Emergency Reference Guide,” Yardley, PA: StayWell, 2014
but the publisher had changed:
Once you are in working on the revision,
if you click on the three tiny white dots in the gray oval
after the words at the top of the yellow box “Examples of Primary Texts and References”
a note might appear telling you “This is limited to five entries.”
This revision could be a great time to consider using FREE TEXTBOOKS.
“Our faculty and staff have made an amazing effort to lower textbook costs . . .
De Anza students will save over $2.5 million per year in textbook costs by using OER”
(OER = Open Educational Resources = free textbooks.)
– – – Some instructors use online reading at various individual sources
instead of, or in addition to textbooks.
Where to to find free textbooks?
The bookstore has a page of free textbook downloads for students.
https://www.deanza.edu/bookstore/oer.html
As of Fall quarter 2024, these De Anza College classes had some or all free textbooks:
ADMJ/ICS 29, ANTH 1, ASTR 4/10, BIOL 10, BUS 10, BUS 56, BUS 87, CHEM 1A/B/C, C D 56, CIS 33A, CIS 40/41A, CIS 64F, COMM 1/10, COMM 7 & 10, COMM 10, COMM 70, ECON 1, ECON 2, ELIT 8, ELIT 10, ELIT 17, ELIT 46C, ESCI 1, E S ½, ESL 252, EWRT 1A, EWRT 1A & 2, EWRT 1B, EWRT 2, EWRT 200, EWRT 211, GEO 10, HIST 3C, HIST 17A/B/C, HLTH57A, HUMI 7 , JOUR 80, MATH 10, MATH 11, MATH 22, MATH 44, MATH 114, MATH 210, MATH 212, PARA 96A, PHIL 1, PHIL 20B, PSYC 1, READ 200, READ 211
Find more open educational resources (OERs) at: https://openstax.org/subjects
and over 50,000 free, open source eBooks https://www.gutenberg.org/
– – – The most often downloaded (free) books at Project Gutenberg,
(again, that you could offer students instead of having them pay for them),
are Pride and Prejudice, Beowulf, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Metamorphosis (Kafka), and others by Charles Darwin, Shakespeare, Kant, James Joyce, Herman Melville, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Bronte, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe, Homer, Jack London, Sigmund Freud and Mark Twain . . .
some are in Chinese, Spanish, French, German . . .
All this could also give you the opportunity to have students read just part of a book
without De Anza having to pay to copy pages and again, without students having to pay for yet another text.
If you decide to use free textbooks take a look at
https://www.deanza.edu/academic-services/oer/
to get a green icon 
next to the listing for your class in the schedule of classes that advertises your class to students
(see icon at the right below).
To find and contact your division curriculum representative, who can answer most questions,
and tell you who in the division / department is assigned the work,
go to https://www.deanza.edu/curriculum/curriculumcommittee/members/
or, if that page disappears, go to
http://dilbert.fhda.edu/curriculum/
and do a search.
As you consider revisions,
please remember that any of the public can read curriculum in anticipation of taking a class.
And most of our syllabi can also be read in advance of taking a class by potential students.
Your syllabus can include sales pitches for why someone would choose your class.
Perhaps of interest: syllabus examples from De Anza syllabi, which includes:
1. Basic Information
2. Goals for Students in the Course
3. Grading Criteria
4. Academic Integrity (Three alternate approaches)
5. Disruptive Behavior
6. Extra Help and Support
7. Late Assignments
8. Schedule of Topics, Coursework and Exams
9. Final Exam and Other Important Dates
10. Class policies / Homework
11. Class policies / Exams
12. Class policies / Cell Phones
13. Other Potential Class Policies
14. Syllabus is subject to change
15. Health and Safety
Notes from other colleges, including SJSU, SFSU, UCLA, Yale and UCSD.
