Existing Scholarship

Why should we focus on transforming a course syllabus?

Your syllabus plays many roles in your course. Often, instructors labor over their syllabus, filling it with course policies and procedures, as well as institutional regulations. To students, the syllabus can end up feeling more like a list of do’s and don’ts, which can increase a learner’s anxiety and self-doubt. If that happens, your syllabus is likely creating a barrier for some of your students. The Liquid Syllabus improves that problem.

Many practitioners have reimagined new opportunities for the syllabus. Bain explores the concept of a promising syllabus in What the Best College Teachers Do (2004), and Harrington and Thomas write about the transformative power of a syllabus in Designing a Motivational Syllabus (2018). In a 2011 study, Harnish and Bridges found that a syllabus written in a friendly tone has a significant impact on how students perceive an instructor by unhinging the common student expectation that “faculty are unapproachable” (p. 1). In short, a course syllabus offers many opportunities for making a meaningful first impression with students at a moment when they are most vulnerable.

The syllabus has also been examined as a starting point for liberatory pedagogy. Taylor, Veri, Eliason, Hermoso, Boster, and Van Olphen's 2019 article, The Social Justice Syllabus Design Tool: A First Step in Doing Social Justice Pedagogy Links to an external site., offers a useful framework for faculty to transform their syllabus from a psychological barrier into a tool for reducing stereotype threat and other forms of marginalization experienced by students of color and women in STEM programs.  The Center for Urban Education (CUE), based out of USC Rossier's School of Education, also provides a free, public Syllabus Review Guide Links to an external site. that is framed as an "inquiry tool for promoting racial and ethnic equity and equity-minded practice." 

First impressions matter to students. In fact, they are shown to matter more than an instructor’s reputation (Buchert, Laws, Apperson, & Bregman, 2008). In an online course, the syllabus is the first connection a student has with an instructor, and in humanized online courses it is intentionally designed to welcome and support students. It is written in a supportive tone and uses asset-based language to encourage growth, cultivate hope, establish expectations for success, and recognize the array of experiences and knowledge students bring to the class as a value that enriches learning.

 

References: