Syllabus Activity #2: Draft the First Pages

Download your own copy of this page as a Google document.

Overview   

As part of drafting the Reflective Course Memo linked to Atmosphere, you will have developed a preliminary Course Description and a starting-out set of course learning Aims, both written with students in mind as the primary audience for the course you’ll plan to teach. In thinking through possibilities set out in the “Atmosphere-Related Practices” section, you will have added strategies for speaking directly to learners as an audience. The Aims section of this teaching resource will have added information about and examples of why and how to write meaningful learning aims.

For this next stage of syllabus design and drafting, you’ll draw on those resources, and perhaps some of the Deeper Dive resources, to draft the first 2-3 pages of your learning-centered syllabus. As part of gathering ideas. 

Two further notes, focused on document accessibility, before diving in: 

• As teachers increasingly make use of virtual learning environments (VLE) such as Canvas for sharing all course information, inclusion and universal design practitioners advocate for developing an accessible word-based document before setting up a syllabus within the VLE. Why? A word-based document is much easier for students to access, annotate, and adapt as they navigate their individual learning accommodations and needs. 
• There will be times when access to the school’s VLE or LMS, Learning Management Systems, is closed to learners, teachers, advisors, and administrators.  Creating course materials as word-based documents will make it easier to share these materials for annual reviews, departmental accreditation, curriculum revision, and a student’s transfer of credits.

Now to drafting those first pages where focus on sharing the following types of information with our students readers: Course Information, Course Description, Learning Aims, and Learning Information. These categories might become headers in your drafting; however, we offer them here as ideas for organization frequently noted in syllabus-related empirical research.

“Sample Syllabuses for Design Activity #2” gathered in a google folder are created by instructors as part of CEI-sponsored consultations, seminars, or courses.

Course Information

This opening section will include information such as:

• Course title and number of credits
• Course designator and number, and department
• Course prerequisites (if any)
• Instructor and TA names 
  • To create a plan for sharing pronouns, consult the google document “10 (Annotated) Tips About Using & Understanding Non-Binary or Genderqueer Pronouns” that’s part of CEI’s resource google folder on Pronouns.
• Office location and contact information (phone? email? virtual options? preference?)
• Virtual Learning Environment location – e.g., Canvas, Moodle, blog, or other platform
• Day(s), time(s), place(s) of class sessions (e.g., face-to-face, online, field, lab, a mix)

We often share these as a matter of communicating protocol rather recognizing that these first segments also work to communicate how we will work with students.

• For example, a course information section might say more to convey how we envision office hours working to support student learning. Three common uses for student hours have emerged in online teacher discussion: We Greet, We Meet, We Work.
• Rather than provide too much information at the start of a syllabus, you might use the brief greet, meet, work phrasing, and then link out to a resource where you map out the why, how, and when for students to seek out varied, accessible interactions. Examples for these approaches include:
  • The “Creating Warm Classroom Climate” google document and “Wise Feedback that Supports High Standards” matrix.
  • VIji Sathy’s “Using Structured Office Hours to Improve Student Engagement” infographic offers ideas about office hours at the start, during, and near the end of a course. Bonni Stachowiak’s “How to Get Students to Join Your Office Hours” blogpost expands on these ideas.
  • For ideas about new ways of orienting office hours, consider reviewing the “Welcoming and Supporting Students During Student Hours” google document.
  • And, for thinking about ways our language might impact our students’ first impressions of the course, and of us, attend to all “Ten Reasons Why Your Syllabus Might Suck” that The Visual Communications Guy sets out in his blogpost.

Course Description and Learning Aims 

As you finalise these sections, the “Bloom and Fink on Writing Aims” google folder, the “Examples of Aims slidedeck, and the “Sample Learning Syllabus Course Descriptions” pdf will be helpful.

You’ll notice, in these examples and in general, that most instructors set out the aims as a separate listing following the description, with some opting to embed these details in the course description. In either case, the teachers are selecting apt, descriptive verbs in setting out course aims, and are embedding verbal and visual cues to assist learners in identifying/viewing the aims, especially if these are embedded in paragraphs.

Learning Information

Learn more about incorporating syllabus components related to Texts and Technology, and to Learning Expectations, including learners and teacher roles and responsibilities, and general patterns for class session preparation and participation.