For those of you preparing you syllabi for next semester...

The syllabus has been a topic of discussion at past TBs.  I posted this
knowing some folks on this list are interested...

Jim Greenberg

        THE FUNCTION OF THE COURSE SYLLABUS

Syllabus Functions

Your syllabus can serve a wide variety of functions that will support and
challenge students as they engage in their educational activities.

1) Establishes an Early Point of Contact and Connection Between Student and
Instructor

Research has shown that students want more frequent interaction with
faculty.  You can begin to communicate your availability by including basic
information such as your name, address, telephone numbers, e-mail address,
office hours, how to arrange for a conference.  [See Examples, Part II] You
can also include a page soliciting biographical information (also address,
phone #, e-mail, etc.) that will help you to learn students' names, their
interests, and why they are in the course.  To encourage interaction with
other students in the course, you might use this information to develop a
student roster (including name, address, phone #, e-mail, etc.) that is
particularly useful for group work and work time out of class.  You can
include similar information about other important student contacts, such as
TAs, technicians, main office staff, and librarians, when appropriate.  This
contact information will be useful in case plans change during the course of
the term or semester.

2) Helps Set the Tone for Your Course

Your syllabus communicates much about your attitudes toward students and
learning.  The way in which you communicate your views helps students to
understand whether your class will be conducted in a formal or informal
manner.  Communicating an openness to questions, concerns, and dialogue
begins with the syllabus.

3) Describes Your Beliefs About Educational Purposes

You can explain whether your course has a product or a process orientation
and how that determines your expectations of students.  Explain how you have
set your agenda for the course, how the course structure reinforces goals
and objectives, how the activities and assignments will help them to meet
both product and process goals.  You may describe learning strategies and
techniques you will use and your rationale for using them.  You can make
explicit how your criteria and standards for both their work process and
products are aligned with course goals.

4) Acquaints Students with the Logistics of the Course

Courses vary in terms of the days classes meet, the instructors for each
class, and the type of sessions which occur (i.e., guest lecturer, teamwork
sessions, simulations, films, etc.).  Your syllabus can detail this
information so that students will know what to expect and can be prepared
for each class meeting.  Providing students with a course calendar helps
them to plan their work.  Noting holidays and any days on which class will
be canceled or rescheduled allows students to plan ahead and prevent
misunderstandings.  It also shows that you respect the value of students'
time.  [See Examples, Part II]

5) Contains Collected Handouts

Faculty often distribute handouts as they become appropriate to the topics
covered.  Often students put them into whatever notebook is at hand and then
find it difficult to retrieve them.  By planning your course, preparing the
necessary handouts, and including them in your syllabus, you help students,
among other things, to keep all course material together and accessible.
These items, among other things, might include biographical information
forms, detailed information on assignments, various evaluation forms, or
diagrams and other visual representations.

6) Defines Student Responsibilities for Successful Course Work

Your syllabus can help students to achieve some personal control over their
learning, to plan their semester, and to manage their time effectively.  If
your students have a clear idea of what they are expected to accomplish,
when, and even why, they will be more likely to finish assignments within a
reasonable time and be appropriately prepared for classes and exams.

7) Describes Active Learning

Students often conceive of learning as the acquisition of correct
information, but they may not know what it means to take an active role in
the process, beyond rote memorization and recall.  You can include a
description of your expectations for student initiative in your syllabus.
If critical thinking, problem solving, and inquiry are part of your course,
it is helpful to tell students that they will be asked to consider multiple
viewpoints and conflicting values and to imagine, analyze, and evaluate
alternate positions on issues or solutions to problems.

It is also important to describe what students can expect from you in your
role as teacher: content expert, formal authority, socializing agent,
facilitator, role model, experienced learner, resource consultant, coach,
counselor.

8) Helps Students to Assess Their Readiness for Your Course

What are the prerequisites for your course?  In addition to specific course
prerequisites, students should be given some idea about what they should
already know and what skills they should already have before taking your
course so they can realistically asses their readiness.  Your syllabus can
provide information about the challenges students will face, the assumed
skill level, the skills they will build upon, and the skills they will learn
during your course.  You may also include information about institutional or
other sources for academic support.  Some faculty include self-assessment
tools and learning contracts to assist students with this process.

9) Sets the Course in a Broader Context for Learning

Your syllabus can provide a perspective that allows students to see
instructors in your discipline as active and experienced learners engaged in
inquiry in their professional fields or disciplines.  Many students are
unaware that their instructors are involved in research and creative
professional activity beyond the classroom, that they are not simply
transmitters of knowledge and skills.

You can encourage your students to approach the learning situation as
apprentice learners in a community of scholars.  You can help them to see
you and other faculty as experienced active learners who can provide expert
guidance about general and specialized knowledge of content and practice in
your field.

Your syllabus can provide information that shows students how your course
fits within the discipline or profession, the general program of study, and
their own educational plans.  You can make students aware that every
discipline or field has its unique way of knowing.  You can encourage
students to approach the field actively as ethnographic fieldworkers who
want to understand the social and intellectual practices of the field.
Assure them that you will guide them while they learn how to use the
characteristic tools and modes of inquiry, patterns of explanation,
discourse practices, and they types of artifacts that are valued and
produced in their field.

10) Provides a Conceptual Framework

Your syllabus can support major ideas, topics, and factual information.
Include in it questions or issues for students to think about that range
from major issues or key questions in the discipline to the meaning of a
significant passage in a course reading (Bean, 1996).  Such a framework will
help students organize information and focus their learning.

11) Describes Available Learning Resources

You can list campus resources such as libraries, reserve desks, reading
rooms, laboratories, computer clusters, and studios that students may use
(including their locations, availability, and policies) as well as any
information concerning the location and use of aids such as tape recordings,
copy services, CD ROMs or videos.  You may also note the locations of
specific books, videos, and sites on computer networks.  [See Examples, Part
II]

12) Communicates the Role of Technology in the Course

Computers and computer networks have increased our ability to access
information and communicate with each other.  Computers are working tools
that students use for their own learning: to enhance their thinking; plan
and revise learning goals; monitor and reflect on their progress; set up and
access their own personal knowledge files; share a common database; build
their own database; use a spreadsheet; run statistical software; keep a
journal; write, illustrate, and revise texts; and build up a portfolio.  You
can use computers as a resource tool to provide direct instruction of new
content, tutorials, and interactive simulations; to model extremely small or
large phenomena (Brown, 1993; Davis, 1993a).

E-mail is a practical way to interact with your students.  Assignments,
comments on their work, important class information, and questions to you
and to other students, and extended classroom discussions are all possible
uses and allow documents to be prepared, sent, received, and read by the
recipient at convenient times.

Institutions, individual faculty, and students are creating their own home
pages on the World Wide Wed or using information servers to share course
materials on-line, such as your learning-centered syllabus, reading lists,
lecture outlines or notes, collaborative software, and other course
information.  When you use servers and the World Wide Web, you can control
the information you want to access by navigating through the system to
explore any topic of interest at your preferred pace and level of detail.

Studies have shown that students derive much benefit from environments which
encourage collaborative/cooperative learning.  The Web and groupware (such
as Lotus Notes) provide opportunities for asynchronous collaboration
(participants can share work that may be done at different times and
places).  Networked writing environments encourage students to write more
and to learn from each other.  On-line discussion groups can lead to fuller
participation in class discussions by students who may not participate in
face-to-face classroom environments (Polyson, S., Saltzberg, S., &
Goodwin-Jones, R., 1996).

13) Can Expand to Provide Difficult-to-Obtain Reading Materials

There are times when courses are developed before comprehensive literature
is available on the topic.  The syllabus can include copies of articles you
want your students to read, as well as supplemental information not found in
course texts.  You can include materials that expand on, synthesize, and
facilitate critical reflection on issues presented during formal
instruction.  You might include materials that fill in the gaps not covered
by class presentations, or present questions raised by other points of view.
When you use the syllabus in this way, be certain that you obtain necessary
copyright clearances for reading selections.

14) Can Improve the Effectiveness of Student Note Taking

Good, carefully written notes are a significant resource for active
learning.  Active thinkers keep notebooks and journals of ideas from
readings, lectures, presentations, and their own ruminations about topics.
It is important to make every effort to help students improve the quality of
this form of writing.  As a model, you may want to include outlines that
provide an orientation to topics for lectures and presentations, making it
clear what you want students to remember, and providing room for their own
interpretations and elaborations of the material.  You can use notetaking
pairs (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991) intermittently during or at the end
of a lecture.  (In this case, two students work together to review major
concepts and pertinent information, to clarify unresolved issues or
concerns.)  It is also helpful to include any detailed formulas and diagrams
that students will be required to use.  You may want to include study
techniques that are specific to your course.  In this way, the contents of
the syllabus will help to organize and focus student notetaking and
learning.  [See Learning Tools, Part II]

15) Can Include Material that Supports Learning Outside the Classroom

Much learning takes place outside of the classroom.  You can transform
student study time outside of class by providing strategies in your syllabus
that help students to interact more critically with the textbook,
supplemental readings, or other work, so that they will be better prepared
for class.  For example, along with the readings you might give students a
short (one page or less) writing assignment that asks them to support,
reject, or modify the thesis or claims in the reading.  You might include a
guide for troubleshooting a story or a drawing.  You can also provide
self-check assignments that allow students to monitor their progress.

16) Can Serve as a Learning Contract

As an agreement or contract defining mutual obligations between instructor
and students, your syllabus also speaks for the college and university.
"You should realize that this fact gives you responsibilities but also gives
you protection against complaints or challenges to your teaching.  For
example, the conditions, goals, and requirements you state enable
(department chairs and academic administrators) to support your decisions on
grades, teaching methods, readings, and topics of inquiry.  That is only
possible, of course, if you and the administration (and the students) have a
record of what you promised and planned, and if your syllabus conforms
broadly to program goals and policies" (SU Project Advance, 1995).  You will
need to be familiar with institutional policies regarding attendance,
examinations, drop/adds, course withdrawals, learning disabilities, and
academic integrity.

Equipped with an understanding of the myriad ways a learning-centered
syllabus can function, you can begin to use it in your course.

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