Writing Your Syllabus: Establishing Expectations

Your syllabus is a contract and sets the tone for the expectations your have for your students. Most faculty find that their syllabii grow each semester as new situations arise that they hadn't seen a need to anticipate before.

Much of a syllabus seems like needlessly expounding on the obvious. Come to class. Turn in your homework on time. Come to tests. Your students -- especially in first-year courses -- may have very little preparation for college. It may be their first time away from home and the first time there wasn't someone making them get up and go to school in the mornings. So here are some hints:

Be Rigid

A very important point to remember is that your primary function is to help students learn, not to be their friend. Lay down the rules with an iron hand. It is much easier to decide to be lenient in specific cases than to have to tighten the rules in the middle of the semester. Students hate it when you change the rules on them -- they view it as unfair. If you tighten up the rules, you will hear about it on your end-of-course evaluations. Lay down strict rules. Students with more than x unexcused absences will have their grade dropped one letter grade. Students who are more than five minutes late will be counted absent and won't receive participation points. It is much easier to make an exception for the student who has a legitimate excuse -- she has to run from across campus -- than it is to put up with having your class interrupted repeatedly.

What should your syllabus cover?

• Reading and homework assignments and due dates. If you don't have these done prior to the start of class (which is often the case when you're teaching a new class), then make it clear how the assignments will be disseminated (are they repsonsible for looking on the web or will you hand them out in class) and how much in advance they will be available.
• Policy for turning in work late. Will you accept late homework? How many points are deducted? When is it too late to hand in homework?
• Attendance policy. It's not a bad idea to give a small fraction of the possible points in your class for coming and participating. You'd be surprised how much it increases attendance.
• Policy on academic dishonesty. This is really important because if you end up having to deal with a cheating student, it can become an incredible time and emotional sink.
• Grading policy (i.e., how will students' work be evaluated?)
• Test dates and makeup policy if there is one. What documentation do you require for excused work?
• Your policy on classroom behavior (eating in class, talking when other people are talking, cell phones, etc.)
• Your expectations for their behavior. I find it really useful to include an explicit statement that students are expected to be respectful to me and to each other. Making demeaning comments hinders the learning process and is grounds for being asked to leave the classroom.

Update As You Go

Each semester, you probably will find something coming up that you didn't anticipate, like students being disruptive because they are eating their breakfast in class, or repeated interruptions from cell phones. Take notes for next year's syllabus so that you can nip the problem in the bud.

Some Suggestions

Here are some suggestions that have been made. Not all of them will work for you, but some might

• Giving make-up tests is a real time sink, so try to avoid it.
  • The advantage to letting students drop a test score (provided they have taken all the tests) is that if you have an exceptional case (accident, funeral), you can allow the student to drop the missed test.
  • Students talk to each other. The first time you let a student take an exam late, you will get more students asking to do the same. Be very judicious if you choose to make exceptions
  • Make taking a make-up exam unattractive. Have the make-up exam be an oral exam.
• Have an absolute cut-off for turning in late homework. It's not fair to accept it after you've turned the graded homework back, and you don't want to wait too long to get homework back to students.