Oh, the Joy! Why Students Should Help Co-Author Your Curriculum

When I was a relatively new adjunct faculty member, I thought it prudent to be selective in our curriculum revision and textbook selection meetings. Though I had real misgivings about proposed disciplinary changes, it seemed appropriate to defer to the full-time faculty for the courses I had not yet taught myself.

After moving to full faculty status late last fall, I approached my new teaching assignment with cautious optimism. “Those course objectives were probably fine,” I assured myself as I wound down my staff position. I would soon realize the irony of the situation. Two of the course guides I had inherited were structurally unsound; obvious errors in the published versions suggested they had been rubber-stamped by our overworked volunteer curriculum review committee. I was faced with overlapping competencies that resisted formative classroom activities, unaligned Bloom’s Taxonomy verbs, and an outmoded textbook adoption for a course I had never taught before.

As I wrestled with developing a coherent curriculum over the winter break, an essay on the Louisiana Purchase gave me pause. Back in 1803, Napoleon’s ministers handed off the territory to American envoys with something of a shrug; neither party actually knew where the real borders lie. I realized I had been gifted academic territory — the very frontier I had worked for years to acquire — but found myself in possession of a broken compass, an outdated map… and a loudly ticking clock.

Mapping the Territory Together

Rather than trekking for sixteen weeks with a broken set of instruments, I decided to be forthright with my students. I opened a dialogue in that first week about the limitations I saw in the inherited curriculum and asked students to treat the course competencies as artifacts we could satisfy and strengthen together. We cautiously launched our own expedition to map out the intellectual territory of our World Civilization II course.

Thanks to rapid advances in artificial intelligence, higher education curricula are more able to shift from preplanned assignments toward customized learning opportunities that cut across program and disciplinary contexts. This is especially useful at community colleges, where the student population is often uniquely diverse in age, aptitude, and aspiration.

Co-Authoring the Rules of the Game

As my students and I journey through the World Civilization lessons each week, we identify where the language fails to capture the ideas and perspectives that resonate. Curricular transparency has allowed individual personalities to enliven the course in additive ways. Students have opened up about their own cultural identities and international experiences; they bring family pictures and historical artifacts to class and are eager to have genuine debates about how, what, and why world history should be taught in 2026. They lead class conversations and ask me to expand the breadth of the assignments I give them. They are staying after class to connect with one another, play the (circularly relevant!) game GeoGuessr, and swap advice about navigating the college experience. Tellingly, in the American History courses where I authored the curriculum and selected the textbook, I am working much harder to engender the same level of student engagement.

Community colleges must foster a “culture of caring” if they want to promote greater student success. By openly discussing ways our curriculum could improve, I unwittingly invited radical transparency into the classroom. The decision to be honest about the shortcomings in the curriculum signaled that I cared about students’ intellectual agency, and learners responded by investing personally in our ragtag learning community and embracing authentic modes of learning.

A Living Curriculum in the Community College Context

Teaching at a community college can be a uniquely rewarding experience for faculty. Strengthening rural community colleges like mine is an economically vital task, as these institutions often serve as the primary engine for social mobility in their regions.

Because our students are often balancing full-time work and family obligations, they have little patience for learning that is disconnected from reality. In the noisy, co-authored classroom environment we have built, it has become natural to talk openly to students about their university and career goals. The time to talk with students about transfer is now, and involving them in curriculum discussions makes these conversations feel like an essential component of my role as their instructor.

Practical Strategies for Co-Design

If your syllabus seems out of sync with your students’ needs, consider these strategies for approaching curriculum design and alignment:

Audit the syllabus together: Instead of reviewing the syllabus on the first day of class, analyze it with learners. Better yet, make it a liquid syllabus. Ask your students, “What is missing that you actually want to learn?” as you transition between course units. Recognize differences: Don’t be afraid to let the most interested and prepared students take the lead and even stand at the podium — doing so can have a democratizing effect on other learners. When class discussions become freewheeling and collaborative, non-majors feel safer asking questions informed by outside interests and what they’re learning in other courses. Classroom diversity can enrich the discussion for everyone — including the instructor — and bring interdisciplinary learning to the front page of the lesson plan. Balance rigor with flexibility: Success in the community college classroom requires knowing when to hold the line on rules and expectations and when to adapt an instructional approach. Being flexible does not require us to lower our academic standards, but it does require us to acknowledge a tacit truth: since no two classes are alike, we need to continually experiment with what works for our learners. Capture student contributions: Keep a “changelog” of what adaptations and changes to the curriculum are proposed and why. We use a shared Google Sheet that allows everyone to easily contribute their ideas and impressions. The students are creating a detailed, real-time snapshot I can return to when my faculty peers and I begin the formal curriculum redesign process this summer.

The Invitation To Build What’s Next

I stumbled into building a learning community where students feel genuinely empowered to contribute. Their ongoing efforts are not just helping them succeed in this course; they are driving the evolution of our curriculum for future community college learners. In doing so, they are putting into practice the craft of the historian.

After many challenging months, the Lewis and Clark Expedition eventually reached the Pacific. So too, our collaborative mapping is bringing us toward a destination all of us are excited to reach. In ways both large and small, faculty should be empowered to negotiate the borders of their individual programs and disciplines and co-create a purposeful curriculum for our learners suited to the age of AI. Like William Clark, we too may be overwhelmed by what we find when we emerge out of the wilderness. “Ocean in view! Oh, the joy!”