As a new semester dawns, professors often grapple with a crucial question: How should we best use that precious first day of class? The options seem endless, and the pressure is immense. Should we dive straight into the material, set the tone for class etiquette,
Technology has allowed online educators to upgrade their teaching material from pages of text to media formats with images, videos, and interactions. But the syllabus generally remains a text-only document. Now some educators are working to bring the syllabus in line with the rest of
For university instructors, late July and August signal the transition from flexible, grading-free weekdays into long (re)orientation sessions and faculty meetings. Amidst city buses full of brightly colored T-shirts and the U-Hauls plaguing one-way campus streets, instructors often retreat to their cramped offices to
Whenever a restaurant asks him for a credit card to schedule a reservation, New York Times food critic Pete Wells writes, “I hear several messages, none of them warm and fuzzy. [The practice] says that I’m not trustworthy. . . . It says that a reservation isn’t
Imagine signing up to take a really exciting trip. It could be roaming the African savanna, strolling the Himalayan foothills, or diving on the Great Barrier Reef. You are anticipating all you will see and do, learn, and discover. But when you arrive to start
Instructors who teach online do not share a physical space with their students, and therefore they need to establish their presence in creative ways. One tool to effectively enhance instructors’ presence is a liquid syllabus. A liquid syllabus is published on a public website, allowing
Getting feedback from students can help you build a better syllabus. They’re the ones you’ve designed it for. They’re the ones who will benefit from using it. They’re the ones who experience a range of different syllabi. And they’re the ones who don’t see the
According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ (2019) most recent data, 24 percent of college students are first in their families to attend college (p. 127). First-generation students bring a richness and depth to the student body, but navigating campus as a first-generation student
Various aspects of the syllabus have been studied, among them issues of tone, its use of images, its length, whether it’s “learner-centered,” and the effects of its being so or not. The studies highlighted here also illustrate the range of methodologies researchers have used to
More than 20 of you responded to our call for sample syllabi by sending yours. Thank you! It may not be a stratified random sample, but your collection represents many different disciplines and courses as well as differences in content, format, style, and tone. I’ve
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