General
Syllabi come in many sizes and formats, but there are two particularly useful ways of envisioning them, in order to decide what should be included:
First, a syllabus can be thought of as a contract that should be informative enough to define the arrangement a student is entering into with you.
Second, a syllabus can be thought of as a prediction that will enable students to plan the rest of their semester effectively. This function, of course, overlaps the first.
This does not mean that syllabi ought to be complete, specific, and fully committed on the day they are distributed. They can, in fact, be rough, subject to change, and open to improvisation. On the other hand, they should preclude nasty surprises, such as three formal papers turning into five, unannounced fees cropping up, and so forth. On your syllabus, therefore, you should indicate your intention to do a project such as a class magazine, even if your plans are no more developed than that at the time of your drafting. In short, students early on need some means of evaluating your whole course plan, its rationale, content, activities, policies, and scheduling. This responsibility is one a university owes to its students, and one in which we share.
Audience
Many teachers have remarked on the difficulties of writing syllabi for multiple audiences. Among the readers for our syllabi, besides students, are parents, roommates (who may be taking another section of the same course), deans and other administrators, university faculty, Writing Program administrators, teaching colleagues currently in the Writing Program, new instructors in years to come, and professionals in writing across the country. Our syllabi also serve diverse rhetorical purposes: establishing authority or expertise, modeling good writing, setting up a teacher-student relationship, prescribing behavior, making semi-contractual agreements, and displaying our teaching approach and skills to an evaluator (among others). How on earth can a syllabus carry this weight, and satisfy all these needs and readers?
It will help to think of ourselves as composing syllabi for the students as primary audience, with others as secondary audiences "overhearing"what is said. This means the stance should primarily be that of a teacher speaking to students, which suggests several rhetorical tasks. Good syllabi project a particular kind of person as author (the specific "ethos" of the text), a person who wants to engage students in a relationship of mutual respect and trust, involving expectations and obligations on both sides. Good syllabi also convey an atmosphere of intellectual challenge, picturing the course as complex and intriguing while reassuring students that it will not be unmanageable, will build on previous skills, and will provide support and understanding for their needs as writers. Extremes of tone to avoid are being overly intimate, chatty, and permissive on the one hand, or stiff, unbending, unsympathetic, and authoritarian on the other. The Writing Program suggests that teachers read the NCTE guidelines on non-sexist language and encourages teachers to be very sensitive to student responses and avoid anything that could be construed by readers as sexist, racist, or elitist.
An interesting exercise some teachers have used is to ask students to analyze the syllabus rhetorically, asking questions about what kind of person wrote it, what kind of student it imagines or asks for, what course experience and roles for students and teachers it implies, what is its persuasive goal, and so forth. Here, the student gets a chance to start seeing the teacher as a composer, too. (And it's a good way to start teaching rhetorical principles!)
As an agreement or contract defining mutual obligations between teacher and class, the syllabus moves into the realm of "overheard" discourse because in making such an agreement, a teacher speaks for the Program and the University. You should realize that this fact gives you responsibilities, but also gives you protection against complaints or challenges to your teaching. For example, the conditions, goals and requirements you state enable Program directors and deans to support your decisions on grades, teaching methods, readings, and topics of inquiry. That is only possible, of course, if you and the administration (and the students) have a record of what you promised and planned, and if your syllabus conforms broadly to program goals and University policies. (Feel free to consult with directors if you have any questions of these issues that you can't resolve.)
In another sense, syllabi are public documents that represent the Program to the broader audiences beyond the students, in ways that suggest the need for care in design and presentation. In its content, your syllabus is interpreted by outside readers as a plan for a typical studio (1, 2, 3, 4). Moreover, its style and polish display your competence as a writer, and thereby put the Program's credibility on the line. It's a good idea, therefore, to consult Program documents, advisors, and teaching friends about content, and exchange proofreading services and stylistic advice with your favorite peer editor. (Even the best editor may not catch every error!) If you write a syllabus that is rhetorically effective for students, and if you are mindful of the public nature of this document (requiring responsible choices and good writing), you don't need to worry further about the readers who overhear your syllabus. Most of them read it from the students' point of view, or with an interest in how you communicate with students. The same goes for Program evaluators: you don't need to add information inappropriate for students. More reflective information (for example, why you made the choices you did) appears elsewhere, in portfolios, Reflections issues, working papers, and so on.
Philosophy and Content
In preparing to write a short explanation of their course content and goals, many instructors find it helpful to re-examine several program documents, which are included in this Sourcebook and/or in the Resource Room.
1. The Spiral Curriculum
2. The Basic Skills document
3. Both the university-wide and the Writing Program evaluation forms.
Re-reading these documents can help you decide which cluster of studio goals and practices pertain to your version of a studio. Of course, you may also want to consult other informal texts and sources, like correspondences on profiling or working papers and other exchanges on Studios 3 and 4. Reflections issues are also a good source of ideas, along with suggesting some of the issues being debated within the program.
A good statement of writing studio philosophy and content has three primary characteristics. First, it presents the course as a writing course and explains writing, along with its relationship to reading and thinking, as an intellectual activity and skill. Second, it indicates how the approach and evaluation of student work will be both process--and product--related. Third, it elucidates the role of inquiry and elaborates, albeit briefly, how inquiry operates within the context of the studio in relation to the teaching of writing.
The statement of goals and objectives is an opportunity for instructors to communicate personal as well as program philosophy. If how we teach is indeed what we teach, we are challenged to construct our rationales with a great deal of thought and care.
Syllabus Content
The following are crucial items regarding your course that you should include in your syllabus.
Logistics: your name; course and section number; room and meeting times; your office location; office hours; and phone number where they can reach you or leave you messages (Writing Program number).
Course Objectives : This section should include the purpose of the particular writing studio you are teaching and its learning themes and practices. You may want to refer to the Studio Sourcebook when developing this portion of your syllabus.
Topic of Inquiry : Here you should introduce the topic of inquiry, explain its relevance to teaching and learning themes, and how you plan to explore and investigate it in accordance with writing studio practices.
Texts and Materials :: What texts you're using; where they're available and how much they cost; any other items, such as notebooks or binders for journals, software, copy fees, etc.
Requirements : This portion of your syllabus should include the course's agenda per day or week, and a brief overview of the assignments, which should be expanded in handouts as they occur during the semester.
Grading Policy and Criteria: You may highlight here what type of grading system you will use and how you evaluate students' work. For example, you may evaluate students based on their individual development throughout the semester, as opposed to evaluating their work in relationship to other students'.
Rules and Regulations : You should include in this section your policies regarding attendance, academic honesty, and late and missed work. Please refer to the "Policies and Procedures" section of this text for additional information regarding the University and Writing Program's policies on these issues.
Please refer to the example syllabi available in the Resource Room.
Design
Someone has aptly pointed out that the syllabus may be the only sample of the instructor's writing that students encounter. In many ways, students will view it as exemplary, even if the syllabus as a composition itself is foreign to the rhetorical projects and practice of the course. It is good to be aware, therefore, that a syllabus carries more information than what it says. Graphically as well as verbally, it models an image of writing, of the writer, and of the course. A rough syllabus drafted quickly is likely to undermine your insistence that papers be carefully prepared and proofread beforehand, and it may devalue your professional image for students who have their own Macs.
The layout of a good syllabus shows some consciousness on the writer's part that it is a reference document frequently read piecemeal. Instructors handle this indifferent ways: with emphatic headings, mechanical breaks, or other spatial arrangements that clearly demarcate the material and make the readings, grading policy, schedule, etc., easy for students to locate. Dense, single-spaced text is easy on the copy machine but hard on your readers. Make an effort, therefore, to upgrade your layout as much as your means allow. It may be as simple as underlining more.
If you include graphics in your design, try to integrate them with your rhetorical purpose, remembering that they are part of your text and the information that students are getting. Try to avoid disjointed messages and dissonances between the copy and the graphics.
Successful Departures
One of the dangers of guidelines is that too many instructors may adopt them as patent formulas and cease to experiment. With this in mind, we would like to call attention to some formats that depart from these suggestions successfully. (And, remember, it's all right to take a good chance and shoulder the risk.)
Instructors who use course manuals may not need shorter explanations since manuals often contain detailed discussions of the course plan and policies and are in students' hands with the course readings, to be referred to on the order of a class handbook.
On the other hand, some instructors publish syllabi in short installments, updating the course plan as the semester proceeds. This makes sense especially in classes where the students have input in altering course policies. Nonetheless, these instructors should give students, in the first weeks, as clear a sense as possible of the course rationale and demands.
As mentioned above, in self-reflective contexts, some syllabi have themselves become objects of examination and writing assignments. (Summarizing the syllabus, or even doing semester planning reports, is not a bad way to begin a semester.) One recent syllabus was intentionally distributed with hand-written strikeouts and insertions, to make a point about revision. Other syllabi have been designed to emulate course content: argumentative syllabi for courses in argument and persuasion, contractual syllabi for courses using legal discourse, syllabi written as complex texts for courses doing deep readings. Approaches like these can be used to great effect.
