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Before we get into the ways that syllabi can be enhanced, let's ask this question: what do students consider to be the important aspects of a syllabus? To determine this, a survey about syllabi was distributed to the TCC student body. In order to get a wider perspective, the same survey was also distributed to faculty and administrators.
Our survey was adapted from a survey created by Garavalia, Hummel, Wiley & Huitt (1999). The purpose of our survey was to determine what information each group (students, faculty, and administrators) consider to be important in a course syllabus. Participants were presented with several common components of a syllabus and asked to rank each one's level of importance on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being "Not Important" and 5 being "Very Important").
The top five components for each group are described below:
Below are links to the full survey results for each group:
We'll revisit this information later in the module. For now, keep these results in mind as you view the basic requirements and best practices for effective syllabi.
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Citation: Garavalia, L. S., Hummel, J. H., Wiley, L. P., & Huitt, W.G. (1999). Constructing the course syllabus: Faculty and student perceptions of important syllabus components. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 10 (1), 5-21.
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