The syllabus

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One of the first things I do to prepare for a class is to write the syllabus. It's the first document the students receive and contains all of the vital information about the course, such as required books, expectations, grading policy, and the schedule for the semester. Mine have tended to get longer and longer- especially for the large general education course that I teach. My syllabus for GEO 121 is currently four pages of text, a page with the schedule, and an additional page describing the requirements that the course fills. For my upper-level courses, they tend to be shorter (three or four pages total). Why is that syllabus so long? First, I like to explain more about the course content than in other courses. Most students taking GEO 121 are not geography majors and never will be. They have registered for the course because they need it to a fill a requirement (a physical science with a lab) and usually have very little interest in the subject (although maybe this changes at the end of the semester for some!). I also go into more depth about note-taking, appropriate class behavior, and in-class policies. For about half of the students, this is their first semester (or year) in college and they may be adjusting to widely differing policies and practices in their different classes. Another reason for adding so much detail is that it makes it easier to enforce rules and grading policies if I can point to the syllabus. There are always students who dispute grades and policies and having a document that contains all of my rules and expectations makes things easier for me. I can hold students to it.

It takes a lot of time to write a detailed syllabus (much less to revise one- other than the schedule) and I spend the first day of each course going over the main points in the syllabus. However, I suspect that some (most?) students never read over it in detail. I am going to be giving a quiz about my syllabus for GEO 121 this semester. I will be giving weekly online quizzes and the first quiz will cover some of the main points from the syllabus. It will be very interesting to see how the students do on that quiz!

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