Crafting an Effective Syllabus: A Comprehensive Guide
The syllabus serves as the cornerstone for guiding interactions between faculty and students, both in traditional classroom settings and experiential learning environments. It's a vital document that outlines course expectations and demonstrates how the course aligns with curricular requirements, ensuring program accreditation. This article provides a comprehensive guide on how to create an effective syllabus.
The Importance of a Well-Designed Syllabus
An effective syllabus brings together learning goals and objectives, learning activities, and means of assessment, presenting them to students clearly and precisely. It clarifies the instructor and student roles and has a significant impact on how students interpret the course and how they perceive their instructor. At its best, a syllabus presents a course as “an organized and meaningful journey”.
Key Elements of a Syllabus
While there are multiple perspectives on the use of syllabi in education, there are several elements of syllabi that must, or should, be included.
Baseline Course Information
Baseline course information includes the course name and number, term and year, credit hours, course description, and location and time of class meetings. This information can help situate the course within degree, departmental, or institutional requirements, can assist in tracking requirements for accreditation, and can help students understand the general approach to the course. This assists students, faculty, teaching assistants, and administrators in tracking progress toward degree requirements and engaging with the course. Your class name and course code are essentially your syllabus’s title. Most of the time, this is easy. The course code, on the other hand, is almost always set in stone. That’s because it’s used for enrollment purposes at the administrative level. The course name will appear at the top of the syllabus in bold, large print.
Instructor Information
Complete faculty information must also be included on an effective syllabus. A study of nursing students and faculty indicated that both groups found this information important to include on syllabi. Faculty information should include faculty name, credentials, title, contact information, office location, and office hours (or how to schedule appointments). It is important to include contact information for other instructors within the course as well. Including multiple contact methods for students to reach instructors can aide in creating a more inclusive course, as there may be students that prefer a certain method of communication, and can help facilitate open communication with all enrolled students. Faculty may also wish to include some biographical information that details their training and credentials that detail their qualifications to teach the course. Your credentials could include anything from your degrees (Bachelor’s, Master’s, etc.) to your job title.
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Course Goals and Objectives
Course goals and objectives are widely considered to be important elements of an effective syllabus by both students and, particularly, faculty. Course goals are often broader, less specific statements about the course. Every class needs to have a goal. This can be a bulleted or numbered list of explicit goals for the course. Each objective is written to clearly explain what will be discussed in the context of the course.
Course Description and Structure
This is where the course will be explained in detail regarding how the class will be set up. This is the component where instructors provide clarity on whether the course in synchronous or asynchronous.
Course Calendar or Schedule
Students find the course calendar, or course schedule, to be one of the most critical elements of the syllabus, especially due dates for assignments. While preparing a course calendar might seem straightforward, there are a number of elements to include that can maximize the effectiveness to students. In addition to including dates and times of class meetings, assignments, and assessments, faculty could include recommended preparation for each session and how holidays or professional or university events affect class meetings. The calendar could also include information about specific teaching methods, such as team-based learning (TBL) or problem-based learning (PBL), for sessions that may require a different preparation approach for the session(s). It’s smart to reference your school and personal calendars when you’re creating your class calendar. This lets you identify holidays, in-service days, and days you’ll have to take off for personal plans. On top of that, it’s important to look at calendars for religious holidays that your school district may not observe. A schedule is helpful because students can refer to it each week to ensure they complete the correct assignments and requirements on time. The schedule can be a table that includes the week or module, specific assignment names, and due dates.
Required Course Materials
Information about the course materials, such as information about the resources students need to successfully complete the course, also need to be included. Information regarding textbooks should include the titles, author names, editions, links to purchase online, and other ways to access the materials (such as at the library, including number of copies available). Faculty should also include links to other resources that may be beneficial for learning yet not required, such as the institution’s learning management system, other readings/videos needed for class preparation, high-speed internet, supplies, library hours, and tutoring or other academic assistance. Faculty may or may not need to include information about computer requirements for the course depending on where else students have access to this information at their institution (eg, technical standards). This should be a list of the names of books, articles, or other reading material that must be completed within the course.
Attendance and Participation Policies
A course syllabus should also contain expectations about attendance and professional behaviors. Attendance usually is measured by excused and/or unexcused absences as well as tardies. This attendance policy should be stated in a way that encourages students to be responsible for their own learning through attending class. One way to accomplish this is to consider a flexible absence policy, which can reduce stress in a possibly already stressful situation, such as being stuck in traffic or having a sick child. An example of a flexible policy is, “I understand that there are times when something will prevent your attendance (illness, emergencies, participating in a university event; sleeping in or blowing off class doesn’t count, sorry). Do you have a unique attendance policy apart from your school? Instructors discuss attendance policies, expectations for class participation, due dates, and late work policies.
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Grading Policies
Some of the most important information in the syllabus, per students, relates to grading, specifically about assignments, examinations, quizzes, and grading criteria. Activities that can contribute toward a course grade include class participation, group work, attendance, homework, quizzes, and examinations. Students will frequently use this grading information in the syllabus to help them determine how much time and energy to contribute to each course assignment, especially if they know how much each activity will impact their course grade. Instructors discuss the types of assignments that students will be required to complete. E.g. discussion forums, journals, various reading assignments, group projects, exams, essays, and any other type of projects. This section will include how instructors grade and how many points each assignment is worth. This is also where the grading scale will be included. Rubrics are another vital part of grading and are included in this section.
Late or Missed Assignment Policies
Despite their best efforts, inevitably, students will turn an assignment in late or miss turning in an assignment altogether. When addressing missed or late assignments, quizzes, or examinations, there are several aspects to consider including in the syllabus.
Required Institutional Language
Regarding required institutional language, most institutions have policies that must be in every syllabus and can include information on academic misconduct/academic integrity, inclusivity, accessibility, and harassment (eg, Title IX).
Academic Integrity
E.g. The honor code of the school, university, college, or other instructional facilities are posted for students to read. MIT’s Academic Integrity policy reads, in part: “MIT anticipates that you will pursue your studies with purpose and integrity. The cornerstone of scholarship in all academic disciplines is honesty. The definition of plagiarism can vary across cultures. If you have any questions about citing sources, please ask me. Plagiarism is not tolerated in the KTCP.
Accessibility and Accommodations
This section is included to notify students of procedures that are in place to provide accommodations and let students know to contact the instructor if these are necessary. Special AccommodationsI strive to make this classroom an inclusive space that supports all students’ learning. The workshops are organized in accordance with Universal Design Principles for Learning to increase access to learning for students with different learning needs. If there is any way you feel I or this course could better support your learning, please speak with me at any time. If you have already established accommodations with Disability & Access Services, please communicate your approved accommodations to me at your earliest convenience so we can discuss your needs in this program.
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Student Support Services
This section includes how to contact learner support and the availability of tutors within the college, university, or school.
Inclusivity and Respectful Environment
All schools are committed to maintaining a respectful, professional, and nondiscriminatory academic, living, and working environment for students, faculty, staff, and visitors. The syllabus should invariably have a statement regarding embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom; however, it is up to the individual instructor to demonstrate this throughout the syllabus.
Title IX Policy
This section is where the Title IX policy is posted online and in applicable handbooks. The last point on required institutional language is that every syllabus needs to identify that harassment in any form will not be tolerated in the classroom due to Title IX.
Accessing Grades and Transcripts
This is how students acquire their grades and obtain their transcripts. Direct links are included in this component so that students can access them after completing the course. It is best to provide steps for obtaining these items.
Creating a Learner-Centered Syllabus
We also encourage you to take steps to make your syllabus learner-centered. The first step to creating a learner-centered syllabus is to intentionally design your course so that the alignment between the goals you have for your students, the assignments they do, and the in-class activities are intentional and clearly stated.
Transparent and Purposeful Communication
Transparent and purposeful communication involves clearly describing why students are learning concepts and skills and how you designed the assessments, class activities, and course policies to guide their learning. Communicating the purpose of learning is a critical component of transparency. Explicitly stating your goals for student learning helps students better understand what knowledge and skills they will gain from participation in your course. Over the course of the semester, students can also refer back to the intended learning outcomes to better understand where they should focus their attention and self-assess where they need to be more strategic in their learning.
Teaching Methods
Help students understand your approach to teaching by explaining why you use the teaching methods you use (e.g., an explanation of why active participation is important for learning).
Policies
Policies intended to benefit student learning, like an attendance policy, may be perceived as punitive. Once goals are stated, students may not have a clear sense of how you expect them to achieve them. Transparency in this regard, whether in terms of clearly stating what achieving your ILOs looks like or guidance on how to complete an assignment, or even how to comport themselves in class, builds students’ self-efficacy and facilitates their attainment of learning outcomes. Additionally, your students may need advice on study skills, depending on their prior experience and disciplinary background. (What should their approach to the assigned readings be? Communicating with transparency and purpose helps uncover the hidden curriculum: the tacit norms, unwritten policies, and unspoken expectations in an educational context that insiders expect others to follow but are often not taught explicitly. Insiders often consider these norms and expectations to be universal, natural, and just “how it’s done.” However, for first generation college students or students from traditionally excluded groups, these norms and expectations may cause confusion, misunderstandings, or frustration. Review your syllabus (or ask a colleague to review it) for instances where students would need to rely on the hidden curriculum to fully understand your expectations. Office hours, for example, may be a new concept for students not used to higher education norms in the USA. Students may not know what office hours are for, how to prepare for them, or what they gain from attending them. We recommend explicitly stating the policies and procedures and their rationale in syllabi.
Inclusivity Statements
In addition to traditional statements directed toward course policies (e.g., expectations for academic conduct, collaboration policy), you can also include statements that show your students that you care about their well-being in the course. You can highlight services available on the MIT campus to support the whole student, particularly where to go if they need accommodations for disabilities and where they might seek help if they are experiencing stress or mental health challenges. While you are free to tailor the language on your syllabus, example statements from Disabilities and Access Services and Student Support Services are provided below. You can also include tailored inclusivity statements, statements about mental health, and others detailed below. See MIT’s DoingWell site for additional statements.
Fostering a Supportive Classroom Climate
A key requirement for student motivation is to foster a supportive classroom climate (including fostering a growth mindset and academic belonging). Many of the guidelines given above to make a syllabus more learner-centered will also make it more inclusive. In general, write your syllabus with a friendly tone, striking a balance between welcoming and inviting language and prohibitions or policies. You can also explicitly state a commitment to inclusivity through a syllabus statement (example below) and explain to students your expectations for their behavior in class and during discussion. You can also model inclusive language and practices in your syllabus. Beyond the tone of your syllabus and course policies, students will perceive your classroom as more inclusive, and feel more welcomed and motivated to succeed, if they feel that their perspective is represented in the content of the course. Review the learning resources and concepts you have selected and ask yourself, which perspectives and voices are present and which are absent. Does this mirror the perspectives and voices in your class? The following statements are tailored for use at MIT.
Guidelines for Discussion
A significant part of learning comes through understanding the complexity of the issues we discuss and developing or revising our own perspective on what effective teaching means to us. It is important to honestly engage with new perspectives and to be open to changing our minds. During in-class discussions, we must listen to and respect one another, even if we disagree. It is important that we honor the uniqueness of our colleagues and their experiences and appreciate the opportunity we have to learn from each other. Please respect others’ opinions and refrain from personal attacks or demeaning comments of any kind. We also share responsibility for encouraging equitable participation by considering how much each of us is talking and listening-perhaps offer a comment if you don’t usually speak, and pause to listen if you’ve been talking a lot.
Mental Health Support
Mental health concerns are common at MIT. Stressful events or mental health concerns can contribute to barriers in learning, such as problems with organization, procrastination, lack of motivation, strained relationships, difficulty concentrating, chronic worrying, drug/alcohol problems, family conflict, grief and loss, domestic violence, and/or persistent sadness or loss of interest in enjoyable activities. These mental health concerns can lead to diminished academic performance and can interfere with daily life activities. Student Support Services (undergraduate) and GradSupport (graduate) are available for students seeking support and can make one-on-one recommendations and necessary referrals. Support for postdocs is available through MyLifeServices. For urgent or after-hours concerns, please visit DoingWell’s page of 24/7 resources.
Digital Communication and Social Media
During this course, we will be engaging with various forms of digital communication and social media. It is therefore important that you are aware of the responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning, and working in an interconnected digital world, and in practicing safe, legal, and ethical behavior online. Adhere to federal laws and MIT community standards that inform interactions with others online (privacy, libel, and defamation) and the use of intellectual property and copyrighted material.
Using Simple Syllabus
The first step to creating your new syllabus is to launch Simple Syllabus. Select Simple Syllabus from the Course Tools menu on the left in your Canvas course. Select the Navigation tab at the top of the page. You will see a list of the tools currently enabled in your course. Scroll down to locate the Simple Syllabus link and click on the three vertical dots to enable it. Once you have enabled Simple Syllabus, continue to scroll to the bottom of the list and select Save. Select the syllabus you wish to edit and click the Edit icon. While editing your syllabus, many syllabus sections (components) are automatically populated.
Visibility Settings
Navigate to the syllabus section you want to modify and use the visibility icon to toggle between visible and hidden. Visible determines whether this section will be displayed on published syllabi. Many sections of the syllabus will save as you go.
Editing Textbook Entries
To edit a textbook entry, select the Blue Pencil icon. You may see a message indicating that editing will override the details imported from AIP. This is expected. Select “Confirm” to begin editing the textbook. If no textbooks are required for purchase, please enter “No Textbook Required for Purchase” as the title. Please note that all required fields must be completed in order to fulfill the syllabus section requirements.
Adding New Content
If you want to add content that is not already in the syllabus, you can create a new syllabus section (component).
Resetting Content
The Reset Content feature allows you to clear the content of a syllabus section (component) or multiple sections at once.
Rich Content Editor
Within the Rich Content Editor, you can format your text by bolding, italicizing, underlining and using subscripts and superscripts. Additionally, you can modify the font family, size, color, and highlighting. You also have options to format paragraphs, adjust their alignment, create ordered or unordered lists, and add quotes. Beyond text formatting you can create hyperlinks, link or embed photos and videos, insert tables, special characters and add emojis. Select the table to access additional table formatting: table header, table footer, remove table, row editing, column editing, table styles, cell formatting, cell background, vertical align, horizonal align, cell style, and table captioning.
Publishing and Importing
Publishing your Simple Syllabus is essential for ensuring its visibility. Complete all edits needed. Changes will save automatically unless there is a blue pencil icon requiring you to select Save. After publishing the first syllabus, use Simple Syllabus’ Import function to load and publish syllabi for other courses or cross-listed sections. In Canvas, access the course that you would like to import the existing syllabus into. Once loaded, near the top of the window, you will see “Replace with a different syllabus”. Use the arrow to access the dropdown menu. Edit the new syllabus as needed. Simple Syllabus creates a unique syllabus for each section. Faculty should log in to fiu.simplesyllabus.com to copy and publish syllabi across all sections, including cross-listed ones. Use the arrow to access the dropdown menu. Select the syllabus you want to review.
Accessibility Checker
Open Accessibility Checker by selecting the accessibility checker icon located on the bottom right of the screen. The tool will scan your syllabus for accessibility issues. Follow the provided suggestions to improve accessibility, such as adding alt text to images, adjusting table formatting, etc. Remediate the flagged accessibility issues. Note: If you’re using a smaller screen, the help text might not be immediately visible. To view it, select the blue arrow icon to the right of the syllabus section.
Notes for Faculty
Your syllabus also includes “Note for Faculty” sections (components). These notes are visible only to instructors and provide additional information or guidance for completing the following section (component).
Resources and Support
We provide training sessions, guides, and video tutorials to help you use Simple Syllabus. To learn more about the Syllabus project at FIU visit syllabi.fiu.edu.
Additional Tips for Syllabus Creation
When creating a syllabus, instructors should ask themselves if they would enjoy and understand the course content they are teaching. It is always more effective to have another person proofread the syllabus to ensure everything is written clearly. Always remember what is being conveyed to students and keep it simple, including the layout and design of the syllabus. Tables, charts, and outline style efficiently read all the information.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Despite the available resources for creating syllabi, faculty need to be aware of potential pitfalls when developing course syllabi. One pitfall is when faculty use vague language in their syllabus related to course expectations, such as “Students are encouraged to regularly attend class.” Not only is the language in this expectation vague, but it also lacks specific consequences for missing one or more classes. It is important for faculty to document specific expectations for student attendance, content, activities, assessments, academic integrity, and policies related to the course as well as consequences for failing to meet those expectations. The inclusion of specific consequences can assist faculty with enforcing the consequences more consistently. For instance, a more specific expectation and consequence could be stated as, “Students will receive one point per class session for attendance, which will be taken using a seating chart. If a student is late to class or is absent, they will receive zero points for that class session. When moving forward with design, a syllabus should not be seen as a contract but rather as a guide for how the course and potential disputes will be handled.
The Syllabus as a Living Document
Overall, however, the syllabus should be viewed as a living document that can and should be adjusted from year to year as needed to meet the needs of the students, faculty, and administration. That said, faculty must also balance the need for adding new information to the syllabus by removing information that is no longer relevant. Minimally, syllabi should be updated annually to include new policies and accurate information.
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