Crafting an Effective Syllabus: Key Elements and Best Practices (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: There's three things that I think you need to keep in mind when you're creating your syllabus. One, as a teacher, what information do you really want your students to know in terms of your expectations, what the activities are, what the assignments are, what topics you're going to cover, if you've got your schedule in there. These are the things that you really want your students to know. And then take a little bit of time and think about it. If you were a student in this class after you've drafted this, is there anything that, as a student, you would still want to know about this course? And maybe those are things you need to add to your syllabus. And finally, and this is something that you really need to think about at the very beginning, is there are certain elements of the syllabus that are required by the university, and you have to make sure that those are included.

Speaker 2: Keep in mind that you want to describe the assignments that are going to be due throughout term. I think students really appreciate knowing right from the get-go what the assignments are going to be, what they're going to be worth, when they're going to be due. And in particular, describe what your exam's going to look like as well. A lot of instructors don't know, usually at the beginning of term, what exactly their exam is going to look like. Specific questions and that sort of thing. But you can give a general idea of, usually I give, say, a multiple choice and some short answer and an essay that gives students a clear idea of what the commitment level is going to have to be on their part. And some students will say at the beginning, that's just not for me. And then they can drop the course. It's important to be honest in your syllabus, what your expectations are of them, and so they know if they can meet them or not.

Speaker 3: But it should be a complete overview of what's to come. And I think the expectations of the students needs to be there, especially in terms of evaluation. The students will have anxiety over that. They will want to be very clear on what needs to be completed by them in order for them to be successful. But other than that, I mean, I think that, you know, we over-syllabi, you know, we put too many things in there that we maybe don't need in there. And then that becomes a point of confusion. It should be a really useful tool for the students. We've started putting ours online, and so they have links to many things in them. And I think that's great. And I think it actually makes it a useful document for the students. So I also get it brought to class, and we go through things and as many people do, and make sure everything's all clear. So it's good that way too.

Speaker 4: And it's really important, I think, not to change your syllabus. So if you say something's due on a day, it's due on that day because all your students have worked around that. And so those kind of things to me are important because, first of all, don't be vague. You know, oh, something might happen to you if you turn it in late. But on the other hand, you want to be, I think, welcoming. You want to be like, this is going to be awesomely fun. This class, we're going to learn all this cool stuff. So I think you have to have both. You have to have the structure and the organization and the clarity of the rules. But on the other hand, you just can't have that because then it's almost like a sadness of students. Oh, rules. You know, you want them to understand that you love it. It's going to be great. So it has to be both.