The Atlantic: The "Dead" Syllabus

[Caracal]

The Atlantic: The Most Disrespected Document in Higher Education

Last week, the office of the provost at Washington University in St. Louis, where I teach, sent out a new syllabus template for faculty use. It's nine pages long and suggests that any detailed course content—a list of study topics, assigned readings, and weekly homework assignments—be sequestered at the very end. This is not unusual. I've seen and heard the same thing from colleagues all across the country, at schools big and small, public and private. At colleges and universities everywhere, the syllabus has become a terms-of-service document.

Then, 21st-century software upended how courses were run.....

Yeah, I now don't even put in readings or assignment dates on the syllabus. It's all on the CMS, which is where students access many of the readings anyway. It seems pointless to duplicate that in another document. If I end up changing a due date or reading for some reason, I don't want to have to fix it in the syllabus too and then upload a new copy. That also introduces the possibility of version confusion if students have downloaded their own copy of the syllabus or put syllabus dates in their calendar.

[Caracal]

It usually comes down to a combination of: being able to interpret historical sources; being able to explain historical narratives and causation; being able to analyze historical accounts; knowing what actually happened.

Right, I'm not required to do this, but that's what I'd put too, because we're historians and those are the things we expect students to learn to some degree in all our classes.

The obsession at some places with language in the syllabus is weird. There's no legal requirement for any of it. Courts have quite consistently ruled that they are going to defer to schools on issues involving grades and student complaints unless there is very clear evidence of bias or double standards. Maybe it's an accreditation thing. Or a perceived accreditation thing?

[Langue_doc]

We too are given a boilerplate syllabus template, which I've managed to pare down to six pages. SLO are also required in addition to other "sections" that we are reminded to add. We also get reminders every semester on what to include and the language required for these inclusions. Syllabi have to be emailed to the department which then sends them up the food chain. 

[RatGuy]

We have an online syllabus system that the department and college use for assessment purposes. There are different levels to the visibility of that system. For example, the college-level accreditation overseer can only see stuff relevant to accreditation. The dept chair can see a bit more, and students can see it all. Yet students never access it. The upside to this method is all the boilerplate is included and updated by someone other than faculty. We are only required to input certain policies, grading schema, and schedules. All of this is required.

So the hard copy syllabus I distribute on Day One and the electronic copy posted to the LMS do not contain all that boilerplate junk. That syllabus contains relevant information about assignments, due dates, schedules -- as someone said upthread, only "see online syllabus for policies" for the non-relevant admin stuff.

Some of my colleagues do even less. No hard copy in class -- just a schedule on the LMS.

[pgher]

Our provost's office sends out a page or so of boilerplate every year in August. Nobody actually checks syllabi, so I have no idea who uses it. I do, just cut-and-paste because why not?

Some of it is entirely appropriate--telling students about various campus policies and resources. Some of it, though, strikes me as a way for various campus organizations to get their information in front of students, as basically free advertising.

I have not passed out hard copy anything since March 2020. It's all on the course site.

[the_geneticist]

I do not recall a single undergrad syllabus I received as an 80s undergrad at Dear Alma Mater, that had any 'learning outcomes' section.   These outcomes are often either pollyannaish or just full of educese, and how many of you bother to write them (and what would happen if you did not)?

They are relatively "new" to academia.  But if a college or university wants to keep it's accreditation, your courses must have learning outcomes.

I write them for all of my courses.  It's a way to know what students ought to be able to know and do by the end of the course.  If nothing else, it helps put reasonable boundaries about what is covered and to what depth in each particular course.

One slight issue is that most places are not asking for proof that your course materials are well-aligned with the outcomes or that the outcomes are achieved by students who pass your course.  It's an ongoing process.

[mythbuster]

The other issue is that courses that are older than the requirement (Psych 101 etc.) likely don't have them as no one was ever required to write them. Or they have been written many times over every time someone new teaches the class.

[AmLitHist]

About 15 years ago somebody at our place had the epiphany that most of our course syllabi either didn't list any CLOs, or those that did exist seemed to be made up by each instructor individually (showing virtually no consistency or relevance). One of my own missions as dept. chair was to make sure that every English class did include the course objectives--pulled directly from the official course profiles.

My faculty were pissed at me, but whatever:  including those CLOs cut way down on the letters I had to answer from other schools considering whether or not to accept our students' Comp I & II and other writing/lit classes in transfer.  In addition, our department (and the English depts. on our other campuses) were ahead of the game a couple of years later, after the HLC/North Central dinged us on an interim review and demanded that COs be included on every syllabus for every class section offered. Those CLO's are now part of the boilerplate for every class, and faculty just copy and paste/use the course template.

It never made sense to me that a syllabus wouldn't include the LOs: done right, they're clearly stated, objective, and measurable, and once established, it's easy to key every assignment to one or more of them. (I also include MLOs--module/unit objectives--with every unit of study, both to keep myself on track when planning, and to make clear to students how everything we do in the class really does have a clear purpose.) They're also really helpful when creating grading rubrics.

ETA:  yes, every syllabus for every course is checked for the presence of LOs and other information as well.  The department secretary has a list of things to look for; she then sends OK'd syllabi to the chair, who double checks; they then get sent to the Dean's secretary, who checks again; and the Dean spot checks something like 12 or 15%, just to be sure.  I've had colleagues who've gotten their syllabi bounced back for lacking LOs or other information (e.g., grading scale, late policy, academic integrity policy, Access/ADA statements, and such).

[lightning]

We're required to include the Learning Outcomes on every syllabus. If we did not, we'd be taken to task by the head of department, and maybe required to turn in the revised, learning-outcome-provided syllabus. I always include a humorous one on mine ("impress friends and family with your use of terms like 'causal ontology,'" etc). The fact that no official ever mentions this shows that they just glance at the syllabus instead of reading the Learning Outcomes all the way through.

I have to say that sometimes they're useful. When my offspring was taking some rather disorganized college classes, a look at the specified Learning Outcomes helped identify what he was supposed to be taking in, which was otherwise rather unclear.

We have an Assessment Bureaucracy at my place that was installed a few years ago. Their meaningless but high-paying job is to read SLOs. If I used the word "impress" in my SLOs, even in jest, my Assessment office would return my syllabus to me and tell me that the SLO is not measurable.

[Hegemony]

I actually put "(results not guaranteed)" after my humorous Learning Outcomes, especially the ones in which I talk about deterring malevolent fairies.

[lightning]

I actually put "(results not guaranteed)" after my humorous Learning Outcomes, especially the ones in which I talk about deterring malevolent fairies.

It sounds like your place is a lot more fun than mine.

[MarathonRunner]

Professors I worked with as a TA during my PhD had an official syllabus, as required, with all the boilerplate stuff as well as course schedule, readings, assignments, etc. Then they had a much shorter "course details" or "course essentials" or "readings and assignments" document that just had the course schedule, required readings, and assignments on it. That way they fulfilled the need for a syllabus that included all the boilerplate, but also had a more concise document for students to refer to for all the course-related things they had to do.

[MarathonRunner]

I do not recall a single undergrad syllabus I received as an 80s undergrad at Dear Alma Mater, that had any 'learning outcomes' section.   These outcomes are often either pollyannaish or just full of educese, and how many of you bother to write them (and what would happen if you did not)?

Since my field is an accredited professional field that requires students to achieve certain competencies through their coursework, if I did not include learning objectives, I would not only be reprimanded and required to include them, but if I did not, as a sessional I could lose my job, as tenure track it would not look good for my tenure package, and for tenured I have no idea. The program could also be at risk of losing its accreditation the next time it was up for review (yes, the accreditation team looks at all syllabi for courses in the program).

[kaysixteen]

What if any steps are regularly taken to at least attempt to measure whether such outcomes are met, and what happens when it is reasonably determined that they have not been?

[Hegemony]

What if any steps are regularly taken to at least attempt to measure whether such outcomes are met, and what happens when it is reasonably determined that they have not been?

That is the subject of an Assessment, which is a whole second huge level of bureaucracy. First we have to get the Assessment Methods approved. Then we have to apply the Assessment Methods. Then we have to write huge reports about our Assessments. Then the reports sit unread in piles on an administrator's desk until the end of time.