When a course is offered in multiple sections, sometimes at different locations, and taught by different instructors and worthy of transfer credit, it’s important that the students taking it have the same course experiences. Depending on the course, there may be some or no flexibility
Getting feedback from students can help you build a better syllabus. They’re the ones you’ve designed it for. They’re the ones who will benefit from using it. They’re the ones who experience a range of different syllabi. And they’re the ones who don’t see the
According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ (2019) most recent data, 24 percent of college students are first in their families to attend college (p. 127). First-generation students bring a richness and depth to the student body, but navigating campus as a first-generation student
Various aspects of the syllabus have been studied, among them issues of tone, its use of images, its length, whether it’s “learner-centered,” and the effects of its being so or not. The studies highlighted here also illustrate the range of methodologies researchers have used to
More than 20 of you responded to our call for sample syllabi by sending yours. Thank you! It may not be a stratified random sample, but your collection represents many different disciplines and courses as well as differences in content, format, style, and tone. I’ve
All communication begins with grabbing your listener’s attention, something that everyone instinctively understands. A marriage proposal does not begin with the speaker opening a PowerPoint presentation, providing an outline of topics to be covered, and a schedule with time for each topic—including time at the
Our reader-submitted collection of syllabi and ideas about them contains any number of interesting ways of handling the small syllabus details and larger ways of dealing with the whole document. Here’s an assembled group of those small and large ideas, listed in no particular order
It’s almost impossible to read blogs, articles, even books on teaching without seeing a multitude of suggestions for not “wasting” the first day of class by covering the syllabus, course schedule, class rules and routines, and the like. I’ve even written one myself (Brown, 2009).
Lecture as a pedagogical approach has come under considerable fire in recent years. Indeed, critics have called lectures boring, obsolete, old-fashioned, overused, and even unfair, among other, less-flattering terms. The criticisms, however, have most often been leveled at one type of lecture: the full-class-session, transmission-model
If you teach, you know about learning outcomes. Unless you inherited your courses from someone else, you’ve developed lists of them. You’ve probably had to submit these lists to the administration to be reviewed and possibly revised. You might have been asked to map these
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