Hands up, all readers who have ever taken a course syllabus casually; who have constructed it in haste, near the beginning of the term, and thought of it as either a basic list of reading and writing assignments, no more, or a protective document designed to cover the teacher when a student claims he didn't know he couldn't cheat on tests?
I plead guilty to insufficient thought about the syllabus for my classes; the real work, I must have felt, was involved in choosing the texts, reading them, and thinking of good assignments. The presentation of that work to students, in the form of a syllabus, and particularly sharing with them the educational reasoning which underlay them? This got lost in the beginning-the-semester rush, I am afraid.
Things will be different, as they should be, after reading The Course Syllabus. Here, Judith Grunert of Syracuse University provides both a rationale for carefulness and plenitude in syllabus-design--by linking it persuasively to the current discussion of a shift from the teaching paradigm to the learning paradigm--and, more important, a lot of practical suggestions and examples.
Skeptics who wonder how important the syllabus really is might be
impressed, as I was, with the list Grunert supplies of its functions: the
syllabus
This is even a bit overwhelming. And the sample table of contents from a syllabus used in a business course at Syracuse, which runs to something over seventy-five pages, not only testifies to an instructor with an infinite capacity for taking pains, but presumably to a department with an almost infinite capacity for paying for photocopying. On the other hand, occasional references to the "course handbook," rather than the syllabus, may suggest that when it gets to this length it is a book, which students must purchase like any other required text.
The Course Syllabus is an admirable little book. It simply but convincingly marries theory with practice; it has copious examples, a checklist of syllabus items, a useful discussion of on-line syllabi, and a good bibliography arranged by topics. The Foreword by Robert Diamond, who runs the estimable Center for Instructional Development at Syracuse, points out that the professors who have been named Carnegie Professors of the Year were distinguished by the detail and planning shown in their syllabi.
More careful attention to syllabi (perhaps especially to the course rationale, writing which will make many of us think for the first time what it is) may not guarantee a Carnegie Professor-of-the-Year award, but Grunert gives ample reason to believe it will help our students learn more and better, and that is a good enough reason for any conscientious teacher.
Merritt Moseley
UNC-Asheville