Course Syllabus

Contact Information

Sarah Little, Associate Professor

Office hours: by appointment on Tuesdays through Thursdays

sarah.little@ou.edu

Course Details

For a list of course activities, scroll to the bottom of this page.

Course Prerequisites 

There are no prerequisites for the course.

Course Materials

All readings will be on Canvas.

The semester project will involve design efforts, so you will need your design equipment, e.g., trace paper, sketchbook, pens and pencils, etc.

Learning Outcomes

After completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Reflect on the historical context of urban design
• Interpret a variety of perspectives on the relationship between environment and society
• Synthesize theoretical ideas to explain contemporary design practice
• Generate solutions to emerging designing, planning, and land use dilemmas

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Grades

Breakdown

Course activities and grades listed for each activity

Activity	Description	Points/Percentage
Guthrie inventory and analysis	See project description	10
Site visit	You're an active participant of the site visit. You take measurements, ask questions, do what you need to do to retrieve the necessary information.	5
Project site inventory and analysis	See project description	7
SWOT analysis	See project description	5
Precedent search	See project description	5
Goals and objectives	See project description	7
Conceptual design	See project description	8
Design review with community partners	See project description	8
Final design	See project description	8
Final presentation preparation	See project description	7
Booklet	See project description	10
Final presentation delivery	See project description	10
Class participation	You conduct yourself in a professional manner. You complete the readings before class and are an active member of class discussions. You arrive to class on time and stay the entire class period. You complete projects on time.	10
	TOTAL:	100

Scale

 

Grade Scale

Percentage	Letter Grade
90–100%	A
80–89%	B
70–79%	C
60–69%	D
Below 60%	F

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Course Components

Instead of writing essays, you will apply lessons learned in the readings to a semester long design project. In the various project stages, you will demonstrate the link to theory.

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Course Policies

Communication 

OU email is the best form of communication. Please allow 48 hours for me to respond Monday through Friday. I try to not to check email on the weekends. 

Feedback 

You will receive feedback on assignments in a week typically.

Late Policy

The accredited MLA is a professional degree. One of our goals is to prepare you to be a professional. An important character of professionalism is meeting deadlines on time. Design is never done, it just becomes due. Therefore, a skill you need to develop is learning how to progress a design along to completion on time. 

Plagiarism 

Plagiarism is the most common form of academic misconduct at OU. There is no college-level assignment that can be satisfactorily completed by copying. OU's basic assumption about writing is that all written assignments show the student's own understanding in the student's own words. That means all writing assignments, in class or out, are assumed to be composed entirely of words generated (not simply found) by the student, except where words written by someone else are specifically marked as such with proper citation. Including other people's words in your paper is helpful when you do it honestly and correctly. When you don't, it's plagiarism. 

For more information about plagiarism, watch the OU Libraries Plagiarism Tutorial video and take the short Avoiding Plagiarism Tutorial Canvas course offered by University Libraries. 

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University Academic Policies and Student Support

Access the University Academic Policies Document.