How to Create a Syllabus – Baldwin CLT Teaching Times

Advice Guide by Kevin Gannon, Chronicle of Higher Education

… The course syllabus is, in most cases, the first contact that students will have with both us and the course. As the cliché goes, we don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. The syllabus sets the tone for the course. Rather than emphasize what they can’t do, an effective syllabus is a promise that, as a result of our course, students will be able to do a number of things either for the first time or at least better than they could before. As you create a syllabus, then, the question you ought to keep at the center of the process is: What am I saying to my students?

Sections:

Getting Them to Read It

There is a cottage industry of “It’s in the Syllabus!” gear — T-shirts, coffee mugs — that joke about the seemingly universal student trait of not knowing what’s in the document you’ve spent so much time and energy preparing. But is it really true that students ignore the syllabus? Only if you’ve given them reason to ignore it. Here are some strategies to make sure they don’t:

Keep mentioning your syllabus in class. If you dump the document on students and rarely (or never) refer to it again, you’re telling them it doesn’t contain any information vital to their success. If you don’t treat your syllabus as important, why should they?
Don’t read the syllabus aloud on the first day of class. It’s one thing to take class time to highlight the important areas of the syllabus. But to spend a class period reading it to students — or going over it so closely as to have the same effect — is overkill. Do that and your students may decide they’ve heard everything they need to hear about the syllabus, and put it out of mind. Like your syllabus, the first day of class is an important opportunity to set a particular tone. Try to avoid turning that class session into merely a “syllabus day.”
Let students know where they can find a backup copy. One of the prime culprits behind “they don’t read the syllabus” is students who lose their copy and don’t know (or are too embarrassed to ask) how to get a new one. If you use a learning-management system or some other digital platform for your course, be sure to have a PDF of your syllabus prominently featured on the landing page. Some instructors choose (or are forced by budget cuts) to make their syllabi available only in an online format. In that case, be sure to communicate where to access it, and follow up to ask if they have.
Give a syllabus quiz or other low-stakes assignment. Sometimes students are motivated by grades more than other factors. However much you wish that wasn’t so, use it to your advantage by giving a short syllabus quiz in the first week of the term. It’s a good way to see who’s engaging with the course right away, and who might need extra encouragement. It’s also an easy way for students to be successful on their first assignment and perhaps lessen their anxiety over grades (particularly true in subjects that are anxiety-producing or viewed as intimidatingly difficult).
Hide an “Easter egg” on your syllabus. My father likes to tell a story from his undergraduate days when he discovered, about halfway through the semester, a line on the syllabus where his instructor had written something to the effect of “if you read this, let me know by the second week’s class meeting and I’ll owe you a beer.” Of course, no one in the class collected on the offer. Examples abound of instructors who hide “Easter eggs” on their syllabi. In addition to letting students catch a glimpse of your whimsy and humor (like the instructor who asked his students to send him an image of the ’80s sitcom character Alf), this is a way to gauge how many students have actually read your syllabus. It’s likely most haven’t, at least not at first; but it’s better to know early rather than assume everyone is familiar with your syllabus and charge ahead with the material.
Make the syllabus matter throughout the semester. Be explicit about why your syllabus is as important in the final week of class as it was at the beginning of the term. Students often skim over the course goals and dismiss their importance compared with the “real information” like the course schedule and grading scale. But your goals are a vital part of both the syllabus and the course itself, and should be front of mind for students as well. Use questions on a syllabus quiz in the first week of class to place your learning goals/outcomes on center stage. Linda B. Nilson, in her 2016 book, Teaching at Its Best, suggests questions like “Which of the learning objectives for this course are most important to you personally, and why?” That encourages students to see course goals as something relevant to them personally, rather than just static decrees. Then, throughout the semester, keep referring to the course goals in assignments. Explain how an assignment aligns with those goals. For example: “This essay is meant to help you practice the research-and-analysis skills that are important parts of this course. Recall that one of our course goals is that you will ‘develop the critical-thinking skills necessary to meaningfully analyze historical material and arguments’ [HIST 112 Syllabus, pg. 1]. This assignment is your first chance to show the results of your work in those areas.” Another strategy: Link a reading assignment to a particular course goal. That’s the key here: You want students to see the alignment between the coursework and the course goals. We’ve internalized that understanding. Our students have not, and they need more explicit signposting.