Mac has brought up a good point about the outline: it mentions many more things that our current text covers.  I think there's two parts to this:

 

First, I don't think there will ever be a text that covers exactly what we want, nor should we expect it to.  And I don't think tailoring a new outline to fit with any particular text is a good way to go, as in the future the text will probably get changed, thus creating the same problem of outline/text content mismatch.

 

And this leads to the second point: the latest outline is undoubtedly the table of contents for a text from the past that we no longer use.  Of course nobody follows this to the letter.  It would be impossible.

 

But I don't think that's the intent of an outline.  I see them as being more of a set of desired goals.  We're all professionals, and know what is necessary and sufficient for students to be successful in later courses.

 

For our current discussion, I think we should head towards establishing an outline that describes in most general details what we want students to get out of the course, and what instructors should be teaching.  Then leave it to the particular instructor to what details need to be filled in, and what needs to be skipped over due to shortcomings in the text, or because of different views about what is really necessary to be covered.  Of course, Jason, Susan, Deborah, and myself are the ones to be contacted for questions about specific details, not necessarily the outline.

 

What say you?