ABSTRACT
When you are teaching in a linear sequenced curriculum, the knowledge base of the course is determined by the course the students took immediately before and the one they will take immediately after yours. Ideally, you read the syllabi from all the relevant courses when you select the knowledge base for your course. By looking at the actual syllabi, you will see what texts were used, what procedures were practiced, and what knowledge was supposed to be acquired. In class, begin with an assessment of where the student is in the curriculum. You need to know how much of the material from the previous class is still active for the students. If you find that it is less than you expect, your schedule has to be flexible enough to allow time to refresh their memories of the material. If that will last longer than a week or so, this will have an effect on the amount of time you can spend progressing through your portion of the curriculum. You ought to bring this up with the chair, not as a challenge to the colleague who taught the previous course, but as an opportunity to think through the expectations of the curriculum. A linear sequenced curriculum can be the most difficult type to teach because of the dependence on the students’ prior course experience.
