H-Ready Courses
H-Innovate is a machine for creating new honors opportunities. Beginning in Fall Semester 2025, all sections of the below courses will be H-Ready for students. To learn more, read the course description and watch the trailer for the embedded honors option.
H-Innovate is creating new honors opportunities for you: courses that have an honors experience built-in and ready to go. H-ready, in fact. Think of H-ready courses as offering a guaranteed honors contract option without either the contract or the paperwork. As with a dedicated honors section of a larger course, you will have an enriched experienced with value-added activities and additional learning experiences waiting for you. An H-ready course offers that opportunity in every section. Here is how to do it:
- Enroll in an H-Ready course—the honors option is ready for you
- Request “H Grade Mode” through the Registrar’s Office during the first week of class
- Take the honors survey on your Brightspace course to open the honors pathway
- Complete both the regular and the honors coursework
- Earn honors credit in the course, which will appear on your transcript with an “H”
All JMHC students—and only JMHC students—may take an H-ready course for honors credit. H-ready courses follow the same timeline as standard H Contracts: for the deadline to add, see the Registrar’s Add/Drop calendar for the “last day to request H Grade Mode” (normally the end of the second week of classes): for the deadline to drop, see the Add/Drop calendar for the “last day to modify a course” (normally the end of the ninth week of classes). After the last day to modify a course, H Grade Mode cannot be changed, and your final course grade will reflect honors work.
Starting Fall 2025, all H-ready courses will be searchable with the course attribute HRDY.
See The H-Ready Courses Available Starting Fall 2025H-Innovate is a program aimed at getting your honors students the H credits they need, where they need them. The program selects courses taken by large populations of honors students—most often courses that feature in multiple plans of study, are required, and/or fulfill university core requirements. The most important thing to know about H-Innovate is that the program adapts entire courses rather than individual sections. JMHC students can sign up for any section of the course and have a prepared honors module waiting for them because the course is "H-Ready".
H-Ready courses are different from either honors-only sections or individualized H-contracts. You might think of them as courses with a pre-made, pre-approved honors contract already embedded into the structure of the course.
The process of enrolling in an H-Ready course for honors credit is similar to the process for H-contracts: students enroll in the course and request H grade mode through the Registrar’s Office before the deadline, which is normally Friday of the 2nd week of classes. Unlike the H-contract process, students and faculty do not need to submit contract paperwork or a copy of the course syllabus and revised grading scheme.
H-ready options are open only to JMHC students—and all JMHC students. When approving H grade mode, the primary advisor need only check that the student’s record has the S-Honors or S-Honors2 cohort code. No other approval from the department or college is necessary.
Once H-grade mode is approved, a student will use Brightspace to enter themselves on the honors pathway through the course. If they decide to leave the honors pathway, students have until the last day to modify a course—usually the end of the 9th week of classes—to switch out of H grade mode with the Registrar’s Office. After the 9th week, all honors coursework will be part of the student’s final grade.
Beginning in Fall 2025, H-Ready courses will be searchable using this attribute: HRDY.
We welcome advisor feedback and suggestions for future H-Ready courses: blueskylab@purdue.edu
H-Innovate provides funding and support for departments to adapt high-demand courses to allow for honors enrollment. Adapted courses include an embedded honors option that can scale up to meet student demand and transfer across all sections and instructors. Selected faculty members transform an existing course during a (re)design institute. Participants have full wrap-around support from a course design team to craft all materials needed to implement their honors adaptation.
Because the adaptation occurs at the level of the course rather than the individual section, H-Innovate requires a commitment from the sponsoring department as well as the participating faculty member.
About the Design Institute
In this 12-week institute, faculty learn the basics of adaptation and devise honors options for existing, high-traffic courses. The goal of this project is to add value for students—ideally, all students enrolled in the course. The institute focuses on creating honors options that produce benefit for all, connect to the existing course in generative ways, and utilize assessment practices that allow for rapid scale up.
H-Innovate supplies the instruction, materials, and support necessary to adapt courses and to prepare faculty to deliver the adapted course. Participants meet twice weekly: once in large group workshop and again with a small working team led by a course developer. By the end of the institute, faculty will have designed an honors adaptation and a revised course syllabus, built an honors pathway into their Brightspace course, and developed training materials for other course instructors. Faculty receive a stipend for their participation and redesign work
Participation in the 2025 pilot is by invitation only
Interested faculty and departments should contact the John Martinson Honors College’s Blue Sky Teaching & Learning Laboratory, blueskylab@purdue.edu
Course Trailers
BIOL 20300—Human Anatomy and Physiology
A survey of normal structure and function of the human organism. The human is treated as an open system with the capacity to transport material, transform energy, and maintain a homeostatic state. The capacities and limitations of the human to cope with changes in the environment are emphasized. All major systems of the human body and their functions are examined in relation to the living organism. Integrated into the study of the human organism are laboratory exercises that emphasize the essentials of human anatomy and physiology.
COMM 11400—Fundamental of Speech Communication
Fundamentals of Speech Communication is a required course for many majors at Purdue, and it fulfills the oral communication University Core Curriculum requirement. The course comprises the study of communication theories as applied to speech. It involves practical communicative experiences ranging from interpersonal communication and small group processes to informative and persuasive speaking in standard speaker-audience situations.
COMM 21700—Science Writing and Presentation
Students learn to effectively communicate scientific and technical information both verbally and in writing to a variety of audiences.
ECE 20001— Electrical Engineering Fundamentals I
This course covers fundamental concepts and applications for electrical and computer engineers as well as for engineers who need to gain a broad understanding of these disciplines. The course starts by the basic concepts of charge, current, and voltage as well as their expressions with regards to resistors and resistive circuits. Essential concepts, devices, theorems, and applications of direct-current (DC), 1st order, and alternating-current (AC) circuits are subsequently discussed. Besides electrical devices and circuits, basic electronic components including diodes and transistors as well as their primary applications are also discussed.
ENGL 28600—The Movies
The history and aesthetics of the movies from The Great Train Robbery and The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance to contemporary films. Comparison of the cinematic method with the methods of the drama and the novel.
ENGL 30400—Advanced Composition
ENGL 30400 is a composition course designed for students with college writing experience who are looking for an advanced writing course. It focuses on non-fictional, non-narrative composition. The course includes readings and class discussions of rhetorical theories, principles, and models. Students can expect to learn about writing conventions in their own disciplines through reading and writing assignments that require analysis and research. Students can also expect to gain extensive practice in stylistic and content revision.
MGMT 25400—Legal Foundations of Business I
An examination and study, for management students, of the nature and place of law in our society, both national and international, the social and moral bases of law enactment, regulation of business, legal liability, enforcement procedures, and the legal environment for managers.
PSY 12000—Elementary Psychology
Introduction to the fundamental principles of psychology, covering particularly the topics of personality, intelligence, emotion, abnormal behavior, attention, perception, learning, memory, and thinking. As part of their learning experience, students participate in psychological experiments.
SCLA 10100—Transformative Texts, Critical Thinking & Communication I: Antiquity to Modernity
This course is dedicated to developing the ability of students to write in a variety of genres. It emphasizes engaged learning through class discussion, debate, and peer review. SCLA 101 introduces students to foundational texts from antiquity to the birth of the modern era. Students will explore readings that include fiction, drama, historical writing, essays, and more, to understand both the contexts in which they were produced and their relevance today.
SCLA 10200—Transformative Texts, Critical Thinking and Communication II: Modern World
This course is dedicated to developing the ability of students to convey information through oral presentations. It emphasizes engaged learning through class discussion, debate, and peer review. SCLA 102 introduces students to readings, film, and digital media that include famous speeches, essays, poetry, and more, to understand both the contexts in which they were produced and their relevance today.
TECH 12000—Design Thinking in Technology
Students will engage in critical analysis of real-world problems and global challenges. They will demonstrate the ability to recognize opportunity and to take initiative in developing solutions applying the principles of human centered design. Students will be able to communicate effectively and to work well on teams. Problems and solutions will be examined from societal, cultural, and ethical perspectives.