- The syllabus is a key guide to your course.
- It describes the course and its intention.
- It explains the rationale that guides your teaching path (academic position).
- It provides an inventory of resources that students will need.
- It outlines the objectives that you want students to meet and the way these will be assessed, a grading policy (the contract).
- It also provides some important logistical (Housekeeping) information that will guide students in the day-to-day operations of the course.
It provides a schedule with appropriate material and topics for those times.
Important Syllabus Content
Description and Academic Position. This is the academic side. It's all you, from your field, the heart of your life studies.
Every course we craft is a lens into our fields and personal conceptions of those disciplines. (O'Brien)
Objectives and Resources. What will your students do in the course? What will they accomplish? And what will they read and access to accomplish this?
Logistical and Housekeeping. This includes very important things from "boilerplate" information (accessibility and academic statements) to meeting information and guidelines for student attendance or behavior (Nettiquette, special rules for your class).
Schedule. The more detail the better. Give class meeting days and readings for those specific days. Show assessment dates.
Easy things to forget. Basic course information. Your contact information. Holidays or altered class dates in the semester. Something about you as an instructor.
What you should try
The audience for your syllabus is the student.
- Make it welcoming.
- Show transparency.
- Show what student success is. Be clear and explicit in how your grading will work in the class. Grading policy also should have a statement for late work.
- Quick 2 minute video on an e-Syllabus
Syllabus Checklist
From Harvard University Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning
For student engagement
- Do the title and preamble clearly orient and excite students?
- Does the preamble clearly identify the theme of the course, or pose questions that draw students in?
- Does it challenge or inspire your students? Is there a problem or puzzle to be solved?
- Does it introduce relevant vocabulary without being confusing?
- Does it require and mention prerequisites?
- Does the phrasing set a collaborative tone or sense of common purpose? e.g., “We will explore...”
- Are learning objectives stated? e.g., “You will be able to…” “Students will learn…”
- Does it refer students to the course website, or Internet sources for further detail?
- Does your syllabus establish a clear contract between you and your students?
- Does it provide a means of contact (phone; email etc.)?
- Does it make clear promises regarding due dates, readings, and office hours?
- Does it establish clear expectations for course blogs, chat rooms or the course website?
- Does it make grading policies explicit—e.g., 20% for X; 40% for Y (or something else)?
- Does your syllabus make provisions for writing and assignment preparation: pre-paper conferences, review sessions with you or TFs, etc?
Short examples of different syllabus arrangements. Course and information is hypothetical and for example only.
Syllabus #1 (Course necessary)
Course Description
This course approaches writing as a social practice and a way to cultivate the dispositions necessary for growth. In addition to gaining experience in rhetorical reading, primary research, and multimodal composition, students can expect to learn strategies for finding, evaluating, and using sources for both everyday and academic use.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Engage in recursive processes to develop ideas in writing.
2. Demonstrate rhetorical awareness in writing by reading to understand the way meaning, impact, or intertextuality is constructed.
3. Reflect as a way to understand one’s own assumptions, practices, and dispositions, and integrate learning with prior and future contexts.
4. Practice the flexible research strategies and openness integral to informed citizenship, professional judgment, and academic inquiry.
5. Identify and respond to new writing situations that require awareness of diverse genres, digital modes, audiences, expectations, and technologies.
REQUIRED MATERIALS
The Composition of Everyday Life concise (6th ed.) Cengage. ISBN 978-1-337-55608-8.
Check, Please! Starter course
Purdue OWL
Assignments
Personal Statement 5%
Patterns of Life Essay: 15%
Analytical Essay: 20%
Multimodal Project: 20%
Midterm and Final Reflective Essays: 10% (5% each) (Greatest change in your revisions)
Team project or Final presentation: 10%
Course work, Attendance, Participation and Journal: 20% (Includes weekly and in-class activities in Journal)
*Students must complete the analytical essay, multimodal project, and reflections to pass the course.
**Revision that includes evaluation of feedback can be a separate assignment or integrated into the final reflective essay
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTIONS
(Examples listed)
Personal Statement
This assignment is a short paper (200-500 wds) that serves as a statement about yourself or some personal character trait that you consider important or defining about yourself. It will be a product of your journal and in-class assignments during the first two weeks of class.
Patterns of Life Essay
This assignment is a reflection on an event or occasion in your life that made an impression on you. This assignment will include elements of intertextuality through the course readings or some record of your choice. It will require formal documentation for these sources.
Analytical Essay
From your readings and class explorations, you will choose a topic to examine in analytical form. This will include detailing the workings or dynamic of the particular theme you have chosen and providing appropriate outside corroboration and sources to support your points.
Multimodal Project
For this assignment I’ll ask you to choose an interview subject and do research to establish one person’s emotional “truth” and perceptions of an historical event. Examples of this could be the Great Recession, The COVID-19 Pandemic, etc). This project will center around the interview subject but will expand to cover other aspects of event (historical background, broader social perceptions, etc.)
This is a multimodal project, so it will have to include several digital modes of your event narration.
Course Work
This includes activities in the classroom and outside of class time that will contribute to your engagement and learning in the course. Activities can include discussions, writing exercises or short class presentations. The chief element of the assignment will be the course Journal. Your total grade is penalized for missing or incomplete assignments. They include Journals at 3 pts each and absences at 5 pts each.
Journal
The portfolio is a collection of weekly activities you will do for this class. The portfolio is a vital component to your writing development. It will show if your writing has developed through the semester and the path of that development. It will offer you a space to develop your own ideas for future assignments or your own future writing. It will provide a place you can “store” ideas or a place to “seed” smaller notions that may yet grow into better founded ideas. It is your place to write.
There will be 16 entries to your Journal at course end. You may use any share source to store your entries (I will need to view them) I recommend Google Docs so that assignments can be added easily. But they will need to be uploaded at some point to the BB course.
Midterm/Final Reflections
These are short (200 word) reflections on your course writing and Journal work (you may include major assignments here. In these reflections you will provide short evaluations of your writing discovery and growth.
Final Presentation
This will be a group project that includes a digital modality. The topic area will be determined later in the semester.
Syllabus #2 (Housekeeping or course policies)
Communicating with me
The best way to contact me is via email. Please allow me time to respond to your questions, especially during the weekend. If you email me before 2 pm, I’ll do my best to reach you by the afternoon. Also, I am available by appointment to meet with you online or in person.
Attendance policy
Attendance will be taken daily for advising and recordkeeping purposes. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to find out what you’ve missed. You are allowed 5 total absences in this course; however, a Starfish warning will be sent to you after the third absence.
Any student who continues to accumulate excessive absences after a Starfish attendance warning may be withdrawn.
Syllabus #3 Boilerplate and institutional policies
Accessibility Statement
Students with ADA-documented physical, sensory, psychological, emotional and/or medical impairments may be eligible for reasonable accommodations. This includes Veterans. All accommodations for students are coordinated through the Department of Disability Services. You may contact the Department of Disability Services by email at dds@xxx.edu. If you have registered in a previous semester, continuation is not automatic. Action is required on your part. Please contact dds@xxx.edu to continue your accommodations. Accommodations are not usually retroactive.
Academic Integrity
The College is committed to academic excellence through honesty and integrity. To protect all students from the results of dishonest conduct, the College has adopted policies to address these issues. It is the responsibility of each student to become familiar with and to understand all academic policies and the consequences for failure to adhere to these policies. Please read and follow all policies listed in the College Catalog or in the Student Code of Conduct. (See page 44 of the Student Academic Planner, page 422 of the College Catalog, or go to (Add Link Here) When the catalog displays, scroll down, and choose the Code of Conduct option from the drop-down list.
Student Resources
The Learning Center, located in the XX Building on the main campus, provides tutoring services, computers for student use, and the library. Tutoring may be done one-on-one or in small group sessions, and is available for nearly all courses. For more information and current hours, contact The Learning Center at (Add Link Here).
Resources
Harvard University Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Syllabus Checklist. Harvard University.
O'Brien, J.G. et. al. The Course Syllabus. A Learner Centered Approach. Jossey-Bass, 2 e. 2008.