Contributed by Jane Nguyen, Instructional Designer I (COE)
Course syllabi have long been points of controversy and contention in higher education. Since time immemorial, students have griped about having to engage with the multi-page verbosity of them while professors have dreaded the time-consuming writing or updating of them. Too often, students do not read the most important information. They subsequently ask questions in class or over email that are answered explicitly in the syllabus, causing frustration for the professor.
There is also the concern that syllabi are getting increasingly long amid colleges & universities' fear of students filing lawsuits and formal complaints. If a policy or guideline was not made clear enough in the course syllabus or important information was left out that affects a student's grade, the professor and the school are vulnerable. To prevent problems, academic departments often provide professors with syllabus templates filled with paragraphs of disclaimers, lengthy bullet-point lists of course objectives, & detailed accounts of how future conflicts might be handled. The bottom line is that students often find course syllabi to be an excessively long bore.
With all that in mind, I would like to suggest that faculty consider giving their syllabi an overhaul, converting them from one-dimensional, lengthy Word and PDF documents to engaging web pages that draw students into a more interactive experience.
A key aspect of an interactive syllabus is that it frequently asks students to DO something. This is different from a traditional syllabus which simply asks students to read the text and know the information. An example of interactivity in an interactive syllabus is that it may ask students to drag & drop on a screen, such as course objectives (4 or 5) into a stratified triangle graphic, ranking them in order of importance (to the individual student). The cognitive act of reflecting on the significance of various skills & outcomes makes for a more meaningful syllabus and learning experience.
You could also have students enter their initials in text entry fields to acknowledge reading & understanding the most important guidelines and policies. This can be helpful when trying to enforce policies with students who claimed to not know or be aware of them. Additionally, an interactive web-based syllabus could include text-entry fields for prompts that ask students their thoughts on certain policies and guidelines. In this way, the syllabus functions as information for students but also data-collection for you.
An interactive syllabus may also have a Table of Contents in which key parts of the syllabus are listed and students can click on the topic they need to read about (for instance, Late Work Policy or Extra Credit). Clickable links that lead students to another page where the related info is located in smaller chunks can make the total amount of text in a syllabus seem smaller and more readable. (In Word & PDF documents, the sheer length and "walls of texts" format may be part of what makes not reading the syllabus so common.)
If you're interested in eventually converting your Word or PDF document syllabus into an interactive one but don't know where to start, get in touch with an instructional designer. We'd be happy to do some leg work to help you get started. Also, keep in mind that the initial creation can take place slowly over time. Once it is in place and you understand how to deploy features and tasks, it should be simple maintenance and wording updates thereafter.
The following are some good links on interactive syllabi:
