So, what does a syllabus mean to everyone using it, and how can we use it better? I don't have all the answers to that, obviously, and there's no hard and fast rule about how to do it. I'm a simplifier who likes a small syllabus; some of the best classes I took as an undergrad had twenty-plus page syllabi. There's also a lot of instructions out there about writing or reading a syllabus (okay, a lot of the ones about reading them just basically say: do it). This isn't a head-to-toe guide; it's just a few tidbits about common syllabus sections, and some advice for instructors and students about coding and decoding them.
Description/Rationale/Objectives/Whatever:
For instructors: This is the essence of the course, and you probably spent a bunch of time thinking about what you would write here, especially if you had to propose this course and get someone to sign off on the concept. You are probably either proud of how smart it sounds or worried that it doesn't sound smart enough. However, this is honestly the least helpful part of the syllabus unless someone is on the fence about taking the course and wants to be wooed by the subject matter or themes specifically, which is probably a small contingent. It's gotta be there, but I'm inclined to keep it brief on the paper and do the "history is fun" sales pitch live. Besides, though the designer of the course obviously has themes and issues the course will engage, the students bring so much to the direction of the discussion in some courses that it's hard to predict the places you might go.
For students: This will probably be incomprehensible until you are at least halfway into the course because if you knew all this stuff you wouldn't need to take the course. Hey, that's not always a bad thing. One of the most precious moments of my academic life was our Queer Theory/Queer Lives class revisiting the course description from our syllabus at the end of the semester and finding that we actually understood it, when on the first day we had found it completely incomprehensible. So, don't worry too much about this section-- worry about what the instructor is saying about the course.
Materials:
For instructors: "If I put the materials here and strongly urge everyone to have them and get them all immediately, everyone will get them and everything will be perfect and birds will sing every morning outside my office window!" This is untrue (and not just because there are no windows in most of the graduate teachers' offices). I also believed this and I only had two books last time I taught and I was still wrong. This is also not generally because students don't want to buy the books (although who wants to buy textbooks?), but because the bookstore, Amazon, and all publishers everywhere are out to get you and will find some way to throw everything off. Case in point-- both semesters of last year in which despite my clear request of a particular ISBN number, the bookstore continued to order half that edition and half of an older edition which had the wrong page numbers and confused everyone, including me.
In all seriousness, you can mitigate this somewhat by preparing your syllabus to not use a book for at least the first week, and then making clear in the syllabus what time of the semester everyone will need each text. This will give the online shoppers time to actually get the backordered book, the cash-strapped the ability to prioritize which one to buy first, and you a couple of days to call the bookstore and figure out what exactly is happening down there.
For students: Ideally this is all of the stuff you need to get for the course, but in practice these sometimes fail to get updated between semesters. Also, this is almost never all you have to read for a history course, as there are articles, primary sources, etc which are often distributed by TAs or instructors. Compare this list to the Schedule/Calendar section of the syllabus if you want to get a sense of the things being read or the amount of reading there will be.
Plagiarism/Academic (Dis)honesty Policy:
For instructors: You have to put this in here and probably in some specific way, so you probably just plopped it in there and moved on. Done! This is another of those things that I think is better expressed in the classroom-- through active discussion of good research and writing practices, rather than threats of punishment and intimations that you are suspicious of all of your students.
For students: No one wants to put this in their syllabus because they are really more invested in the positives of the course than the negatives. More than likely this piece will not give you a good idea of what plagiarism is and isn't, so please, feel free to ask your questions about plagiarism in... Office Hours! A section of the syllabus I'll talk about next week, among others.
Have advice, complaints, or commendations about different parts of the syllabus? Let me know!
Description/Rationale/Objectives/Whatever:
For instructors: This is the essence of the course, and you probably spent a bunch of time thinking about what you would write here, especially if you had to propose this course and get someone to sign off on the concept. You are probably either proud of how smart it sounds or worried that it doesn't sound smart enough. However, this is honestly the least helpful part of the syllabus unless someone is on the fence about taking the course and wants to be wooed by the subject matter or themes specifically, which is probably a small contingent. It's gotta be there, but I'm inclined to keep it brief on the paper and do the "history is fun" sales pitch live. Besides, though the designer of the course obviously has themes and issues the course will engage, the students bring so much to the direction of the discussion in some courses that it's hard to predict the places you might go.
For students: This will probably be incomprehensible until you are at least halfway into the course because if you knew all this stuff you wouldn't need to take the course. Hey, that's not always a bad thing. One of the most precious moments of my academic life was our Queer Theory/Queer Lives class revisiting the course description from our syllabus at the end of the semester and finding that we actually understood it, when on the first day we had found it completely incomprehensible. So, don't worry too much about this section-- worry about what the instructor is saying about the course.
Materials:
For instructors: "If I put the materials here and strongly urge everyone to have them and get them all immediately, everyone will get them and everything will be perfect and birds will sing every morning outside my office window!" This is untrue (and not just because there are no windows in most of the graduate teachers' offices). I also believed this and I only had two books last time I taught and I was still wrong. This is also not generally because students don't want to buy the books (although who wants to buy textbooks?), but because the bookstore, Amazon, and all publishers everywhere are out to get you and will find some way to throw everything off. Case in point-- both semesters of last year in which despite my clear request of a particular ISBN number, the bookstore continued to order half that edition and half of an older edition which had the wrong page numbers and confused everyone, including me.
In all seriousness, you can mitigate this somewhat by preparing your syllabus to not use a book for at least the first week, and then making clear in the syllabus what time of the semester everyone will need each text. This will give the online shoppers time to actually get the backordered book, the cash-strapped the ability to prioritize which one to buy first, and you a couple of days to call the bookstore and figure out what exactly is happening down there.
For students: Ideally this is all of the stuff you need to get for the course, but in practice these sometimes fail to get updated between semesters. Also, this is almost never all you have to read for a history course, as there are articles, primary sources, etc which are often distributed by TAs or instructors. Compare this list to the Schedule/Calendar section of the syllabus if you want to get a sense of the things being read or the amount of reading there will be.
Plagiarism/Academic (Dis)honesty Policy:
For instructors: You have to put this in here and probably in some specific way, so you probably just plopped it in there and moved on. Done! This is another of those things that I think is better expressed in the classroom-- through active discussion of good research and writing practices, rather than threats of punishment and intimations that you are suspicious of all of your students.
For students: No one wants to put this in their syllabus because they are really more invested in the positives of the course than the negatives. More than likely this piece will not give you a good idea of what plagiarism is and isn't, so please, feel free to ask your questions about plagiarism in... Office Hours! A section of the syllabus I'll talk about next week, among others.
Have advice, complaints, or commendations about different parts of the syllabus? Let me know!
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