Course Design

• Undergraduate focus: Design your course for Harvard College students. Gen Ed courses cannot be jointly offered at other schools, although students from other schools may enroll. Gen Ed sections include only Harvard College students; if you allow graduate enrollees, you are responsible for teaching their sections and completing their grading.
• Pedagogical oversight: You are responsible for pedagogical oversight of your course. Meet regularly with your teaching staff (and Head TF, if you have one) to ensure that sections are well aligned with lectures, grading is consistent, and the course runs smoothly. You are welcome to utilize the Office of Undergraduate Education’s Instructional Meeting Fund to facilitate meetings over meals.
• Prerequisites: Make your course accessible to the widest audience possible. In rare cases, prerequisites may be unavoidable; if so, keep them to the absolute minimum needed and limit them to courses that are commonly taken by a large fraction of the student population and early in the student’s time at Harvard.
• Class time: Plan to deliver lectures for 75 minutes twice a week. Once-weekly lecture courses are strongly discouraged in Gen Ed, but if approved, once-weekly lectures must be a minimum of 120 minutes. In addition, TF-led sections or labs ordinarily meet for at least 60 minutes once a week.
• Rigor: Make your course as rigorous as any other in the college, with commensurate expectations for student workload, class time, and grading.
• Engagement: Engage students substantively both in and outside of class. Students can expect to spend 8 – 10 hours per week on each Gen Ed course, including class time (lecture & section/lab).
• Attendance
  • Mandatory attendance: Require attendance (in lecture, section, lab, etc.) and do not provide online substitutes for class time. This policy is included in the Harvard College Student Handbook.
  • Absences: Provide students with clear guidance about making up any missed work. 
• Assessment
  • Rigor: Design assignments that ask students to demonstrate their learning at high levels. This should help generate a range of grades and avoid grade compression.
  • In-class assessments: Consider using in-class assessments to incentivize attendance and engagement.​  
  • Feedback on learning: Include some low-stakes assignments (i.e. assignments that are not heavily weighted or are graded based on completion) to provide students with opportunities for practice and feedback and to allow instructors to gauge student learning and progress.
  • Scaffolding for major projects/assignments: Prepare students for major projects and assignments by breaking complex projects and assignments into component parts to ensure that students have the skills and knowledge they need to successfully complete the project/assignment.
  • Non-traditional/creative assignments: Include a separate analytical component (e.g., an “artist’s statement”) in any non-traditional (e.g., creative) assignments.
  • Final assessment/assignment: Offer a cumulative final assessment or a final assignment that asks students to synthesize their learning in the course (this should be in addition to assignments that ask students to take course materials as a point of departure for independent research or creative projects). ​ 
  • Seated final exam: Consider a seated final exam, especially if you do not allow students to use generative AI. 
• Grading
  • Expectations: Set clear expectations about grading, both with students and TFs, from the very beginning of the term.
  • Grading criteria: Establish clear grading criteria for all substantive assignments and, ideally, share these criteria with students. The Writing Center’s grading rubrics, included as Appendix C in the Report on Grading at Harvard College, are a useful blueprint. The Bok Center for Teaching and Learning has helpful guidance about creating and using grading rubrics and ensuring consistency and equity in grading.
  • Canvas Gradebook: Consider adjusting the Canvas default “grading scheme” (i.e., the numeric values for letter grades entered in the Canvas Gradebook) by setting the numeric value of an A so that is recorded as 95 instead of 100, since the default setting can end up unnecessarily inflating final grades. 
  • Final grades: Ensure that final grades reflect a range that enables you to recognize excellent work and distinguish it from less excellent work. Letter grades should correspond to the descriptions in FAS Information for Faculty. Ensure that students who do not attend class regularly or do not complete course readings and course assignments are not able to earn an A/A- grade.
• Generative AI (GAI)
  • Course policy: Convey to students your expectations for appropriate interaction with GAI tools, and include this policy in the course syllabus and on the course website. 
  • Assignment design: Create assignments aligned with the course GAI policy. If you do not allow the use of GAI, consider a seated final exam.     

Course Logistics

• Course scheduling: All Gen Ed courses must be offered on the FAS schedule. 
• Class size: Most Gen Ed courses enroll between 50 and 250 students. If you are interested in setting an enrollment limit for pedagogical reasons or for practical reasons (including the availability of an appropriate classroom, the recruitment of qualified teaching fellows, limited lab or library space, etc.), the Gen Ed office will work with you to set an appropriate course cap.  The lowest possible course cap is 60 students (or 4 sections). To ensure robust discussions in sections, Gen Ed sections generally have a maximum of 15 students.
• Teaching fellows: We are happy to aid you in identifying and recruiting appropriate teaching fellows from across the university. We are not ordinarily able to support undergraduate course assistants for Gen Ed courses.
• Requirements: Departments may elect to count Gen Ed courses for credit in concentrations and secondary fields. Gen Ed courses do not satisfy College requirements in expository writing, language, Quantitative Reasoning with Data, or the divisional distribution requirement.
• Similar courses: If a course approved for Gen Ed grew out of a departmental course or First-Year Seminar, the two courses may not be offered in the same academic year.
• Simultaneous enrollment: Gen Ed courses are not eligible for course-wide simultaneous enrollment waivers. Students pursuing simultaneous enrollment in a Gen Ed course and a non-Gen Ed course must attend the Gen Ed course.
• Courses by the same instructor: An instructor may not offer more than two courses (either as the sole instructor or as part of a teaching team) in the Gen Ed program at any given time. Instructors teaching two Gen Ed courses are encouraged to offer them in different terms, with no more than one course per instructor each semester.