Teach an Honors Optional Course

Setting up your course as Honors Optional allows individual students to select the Honors Option during enrollment and then complement their regular work in the course with an Honors-specific project or experience. Honors Optional projects can be incredibly valuable ways for students to engage in course-related content, make connections to personal interests, and apply learning outside of the classroom. Providing this path to Honors supports curricular flexibility for students and departments.

What can make for a meaningful “Honors Optional” experience?

• Increased student-faculty interaction without causing an undue burden on either side
• Emphasis on the application(s) of course content, potentially including a project that takes students outside of a classroom
• Connecting with appropriate primary and secondary literature and research questions that could not be prioritized in the regular syllabus
• Use of less traditional assignment formats, such as a creative writing piece, a performance, or a media project that applies course content or themes
• Structured interaction with and reflection about campus resources and events that supplement course goals

Honors Optional Best Practices

• Include information in the syllabus about the Honors Optional project requirements and how students taking the course for Honors Optional credit should connect with you.
  • Suggested phrasing: “Students pursuing an Honors degree may take this course for Honors Optional credit. Students should add or drop the Honors Option by following the steps outlined on the Honors Program website as soon as possible. To earn Honors credit in this course, students will be required to …”
• Identify which students intend to earn Honors Optional credit as soon as possible, both to build community and to prompt necessary enrollment updates.
  • The class roster in your Faculty Center will indicate which students have selected the Honors Option for their enrollment.
  • Create an opt-in opportunity for students pursuing the Honors Option to meet each other early in the semester. For example, you might invite Honors-seeking students to briefly stay after class in the first or second week to talk through the Honors project requirements and exchange contact information with other Honors students in the course.
• Spread the Honors Option throughout the semester.
  • Early in the semester, require a low-stakes Honors assignment so that students enrolled in the Honors option can demonstrate their engagement.
  • Use early- to mid-semester deadlines as an opportunity to remind students who are not committed to completing the Honors work to remove Honors from their enrollment.
• When feasible, utilize group projects so that Honors students can collaborate and learn from one another.
• Projects do not require additional prior experience or skill the subject area.
  • This guidance reflects the fact that the Honors in the Liberal Arts program requires students to take Honors coursework in areas that may be outside their primary areas of academic interest.
  • If you are uncertain whether your course may also contribute to Honors in the Major requirements for certain majors, please check with Honors staff or your program’s student services coordinator.

Honors Optional Project Ideas

• Read selections from journals or a novel that helps students dive deeper or make new connections to course themes. Faculty meet with students multiple times during the semester to discuss these readings
• Connect current topics in the news to course material. Students discuss their findings with faculty and/or share their reflections in the form of biweekly blog posts or podcast recordings
• Identify a research question or topic related to the course and write an 8-10 page research prospectus. (The research prospectus helps students develop research literacy without requiring all steps of a research project in one semester.)
• Assist in activities and/or community service projects related to course topics
• Attend lectures, films, or departmental colloquia on a topic relevant to the course and write reflections or propose their own hypothetical event/lecture/film
• Compare a theatrical or film production of a novel or play to the original story, or compare an interpretation of an event or person to reality
• Visit laboratories or clinics to observe ongoing research and interview local experts or alumni in the field
• Visit museums or sites and discuss what they learned about both the content and its presentation
• Identify a topic in the syllabus that is of particular interest and lead or co-lead a related class session

General Structure

• All sections of a given course are either set up with an Honors Option or without the Honors Option for the term
• Students can opt into the Honors Option at the point of enrollment and if, needed, make later edits to their Honors selection through Course Search & Enroll
  • Find instructions for students to edit their Honors Optional enrollment
• The syllabus outlines an Honors Optional project or initial steps a student must take if they wish to earn Honors for the course
  • For large-enrollment courses, it often works best if a standard Honors Optional project is used for all interested students
  • For small-enrollment courses, instructors can choose to either have a standard project or develop individualized projects with any student who selected the Honors Option.

Grading Policies

Guiding Principle

The Honors Program’s guiding principle for grading, affirmed by the Faculty Honors Committee, is that no student should be disadvantaged through having undertaken (or attempted) an Honors project.

In all cases, faculty are encouraged to clearly articulate grading policy in their syllabi and explain at the beginning of the semester.

Assignments

• Honors Optional work should be separate from graded components of the course.
  • Honors credit is earned on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis and should not factor into the student’s final letter grade.
  • We discourage connecting Honors credit with writing a longer version of an otherwise assigned paper/assignment.
• The Q grade process helps ensure that students do not earn Honors in a course for which they did not earn it.

Q Grades

The temporary final grade of “Q” (for “Question”) should be assigned when there is a mismatch between a student’s Honors Optional enrollment status and their Honors-specific work at the end of the semester. This occurs when one of the following is true:

1. Student has Honors Optional selected with their enrollment (as reflected on the grade roster), but did not complete the Honors Optional work in a satisfactory way
2. Student completed the Honors Optional work in a satisfactory way, but does not have the Honors Option selected with their enrollment (as reflected on the grade roster)

Instructors will update the “Q” grade to the final letter grade once the Honors status discrepancy is resolved. Students cannot graduate with the temporary “Q” grade.

Steps after assigning a “Q” grade:

1. If you haven’t already, alert the student to the Q grade, why it has been assigned, and steps to add or drop Honors credit.
2. Student should go into their Student Center, generate a Course Change Request to remove Honors, and submit the PDF of that Course Change Request to L&S Academic Deans’ Service (no signatures required).
3. After their Honors status is updated, either the L&S Deans or the Honors Program will notify the instructor.
4. The instructor should then update the grade roster with the student’s earned letter grade.

If multiple students in a course are impacted or there is a more nuanced situation to discuss, instructors can reach out to L&S Academic Deans Services directly.

A goal of the Honors Program is to reduce the need for Q grades and the affiliated administrative work for multiple units. You can support this by communicating with students about their Honors enrollment status and the need to commit to either completing or not completing Honors Optional work by the term withdrawal deadline. Earlier course-specific deadlines are possible, as well.

B or Better Rule

Students must earn a final grade of B or higher in an Honors course in order for the course credit to count towards an L&S Honors degree requirement. This is true for all types of Honors courses and for all L&S Honors degree tracks.

If a student completes Honors Optional work in a satisfactory manner but earns a final grade below a B, DARS will not count the course credit toward Honors-specific requirements for that student. The transcript will still show that the student was in an Honors version of the course.

Contact Us

Honors staff are eager to support you at any stage of developing or teaching an Honors course. We would also love to hear and share your ideas of what has worked well while teaching an Honors course!

• Sara Stephenson, Associate Director of Advising and Curriculum, sara.stephenson@wisc.edu
  • Course design
  • Course proposals
  • Curriculum
• Aren’t sure where to start the conversation? Email us at honors@honors.ls.wisc.edu