That’s a Series Wrap!
Wow! Thanks to everyone who attended a workshop, and I’m particularly grateful to those of you who attended most or all of them. You formed a core group of participants I knew I could count on to provide meaningful contributions to our discussions. And I had fun working with you.
Big thanks to the Grad Affiliates: Kazem Alidoost, Leanna Duncan, and Slav Dvoretskiy for designing and running this series with me. Hard work feels easy when you have colleagues like them.
Notes and resources for the final workshop are below, and you can browse the archive for notes and resources from the rest of the workshops in the series.
Notes and Resources: Syllabus Workshop
Special thanks to Grad Affiliate Slav Dvoretskiy for running this session and authoring this blog post.
See the recording of the workshop here.
The motivation behind this workshop was to break down the 3 aspects of a syllabus: syllabus as a contract, syllabus as a permanent record and syllabus as a learning tool.
Syllabus as a contract: A syllabus should make the rules for the course clear. It should set forth what is expected to happen during the semester, delineate the responsibilities of students and of the instructor, and describe appropriate procedures and course policies.
We completed a couple of discussion activities relating to this aspect of a syllabus.
First we had a discussion about syllabus schedules and how they differ from discipline to discipline. It is important to remember that depending on the course that you teach, you can use different types of schedules as long as they achieve their purpose of informing the students of the important deadlines.
Our second discussion involved asking whether or not you should grade on attendance. We considered some important considerations in this area, and we ultimately suggested that the course design (objectives, assessments, and learning activities) will probably point to the best answer to the question. We also touched on late policies: is it really important that they achieve an objective by a particular date? Well, depends again on your course design. Finally, Lucas advocated that in addition to listing mandatory language about academic integrity infractions and the possible consequences, you should also provide a positive picture of what academic integrity looks like.
Syllabus as a permanent record: A syllabus should serve accountability and documentation functions. It should document what was covered in a course, at what level, and for what kind of credit. Such a syllabus contains information useful for evaluation of instructors, courses, and programs, and can thus be useful in course equivalency transfer situations, accreditation procedures, and articulation.
This is an often overlooked aspect of syllabus design; we sometimes forget that this syllabus will be held by the department for administrative functions. Furthermore, this syllabus can be used in the future as a guide for a similar course.
Syllabus as a learning tool: A syllabus should help students become more effective learners in the course. While many of these items are not required for syllabi at Illinois, adding them can greatly improve students' ability to learn the material.
We completed a couple of discussion activities relating to this aspect of a syllabus.
First we provided an example of a syllabus designed for an online course. We had a good discussion about the tone of the syllabus, the length of a syllabus, and how a syllabus conveys an impression of the teacher.
Lucas also showed off a couple examples of graphic syllabi, and syllabi that incorporate elements of graphic design. You can stand out from the crowd with a good example of either of those things.
Something important that didn’t come up in the workshop: the sample syllabus we considered was accessible to students with disabilities, making good use of Word headings, subheadings, etc. so that a person using a screen reader would have an easy time navigating it. Attractive as they are, the more graphically interesting syllabi may have more accessibility challenges to work through.
Ultimately, it is important to consider all three aspects of a syllabus (contract, permanent record, learning tool) as integral parts of the document. Each one is valued evenly and serves a pre-determined purpose.
Here are the slides for the presentation.
See this list of recommend elements to include in a syllabus.
Lucas showed off several web pages during the session. Here are some:
A calendar from UIC showing many holidays and religious days of special observance.
General education course syllabi elements from the Office of the Provost.
An example of a graphic syllabus from Economics
Another example of a graphic syllabus, from Engineering.
A fun and attractive syllabus that incorporates graphic design elements.
An archive of syllabi from a History Professor, which incorporate graphic design elements.
Finally, though Lucas regularly cuts from the video the conversations that happen before and after the workshop, he was interested enough in this conversation about a common English idiom to offer a bonus video.
Pre-work for Session 8
Find a syllabus from one of your past courses, or find a syllabus for a similar course online. Idenfity the main sections of that syllabus and write them out in bullet-point form. Think of one more section which would be helpful to include in the syllabus.
For those of you who have been working on a graphic organizer for your course, consider how it could be modified to serve as a resource for your students alongside the syllabus. Revise it to be more student-facing.
Submit your bulleted list of syllabus parts and an image of your revised graphic organizer to What_Yo.2jxzzmpi5efvp6as@u.box.com using the naming convention Lastname_Firstname_Session8.
Check the archive for notes and resources from previous sessions, including recordings of each workshop.