Writing a Syllabus

It seems to me that most teachers see the syllabus as a thankless task that needs to be accomplished; we tend to rush through these (and often, to be honest, have less time to accomplish them than we need). Syllabi are vital to good instruction, and are indispensable to assessing both the outcomes of our individual students and to our programs. Writing one with little or no teaching experience is a daunting task; yet all of us have to write our first. Perhaps it is easier to think of the syllabus for your course as a writing task, just like the ones your students will be assigned over the course of the semester. It also has a particular audience--and that audience is both the students and the Writing Program/Department. It also has a rhetorical stance and purpose--it organizes you and your students. It will set the tone for the class depending on your diction and structure. Are you formal or informal? Flexible or not so? Demanding but fair?

You can't go wrong if you go about the task by thinking first: "What do my students need to know?" and then "What will they want to know?" After that, you should also think about how you want them to act, what you want things to look like, etc. Policies and procedures protect both you and your student--they state up front exactly what students have to do and how you want it done. They should be clear and concise. They should not have any typos or errors if you expect perfection in your students' work. They should contain any information about the course where students will be expected to follow directions.

Your day-to-day schedule may change slightly to accommodate vagaries of the classroom and students; but the overall plan should remain the same. Once you teach a course more than once, you will revise (nearly guaranteed--I still do all the time) but it should cover anything you can think of as necessary information.

I can't stress enough how important your outcomes (objectives) are...this is the glue that holds everything together. If students have met all of the outcomes for the course (or even just most of them) you have done your job and they have done theirs.