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Scott Weaver "Who Reads the Syllabus?" (2022)

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Scott Weaver "Who Reads the Syllabus?" (2022)

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The new year brings with it the rush of resolutions, self-improvement, and promises that this year we'll finally get our acts together. Nowhere is this truer than the college classroom. Students file in ready for a new start. Professors do, too. This month, I welcomed students with the same ritual I've practiced for each of the last 10 years: supplying them with a carefully crafted course syllabus to guide our time together. Despite the January of it all, to hear some of my fellow educators tell it, my students likely responded with their own ritual: ignoring the syllabus altogether.

Such routine derelictions of undergraduate duty have created a moral panic among certain sectors of the professorazzi, who fear many students are indifferent to their education. Some have even taken to burying Easter eggs within their syllabi. In December, CNN reported that a performing arts professor hid a $50 puzzle in his music seminar syllabus, available for any student who read closely enough to discover it. But the half C-note remained unclaimed the entire semester, with that particular page of the syllabus (and the others, presumably) left unread.

The story, which went viral in some circles, was meant as a lighthearted, kids-these-days scoff at campus slackers who can't be bothered to read a document integral to their success. The professor seemed to have good intentions. But the usual pangs of disappointment and pedagogical nihilism I felt when I read it were not directed at the students-they were aimed at my colleagues. Stunts like these are not only counterproductive; they're also a symptom of a larger problem in higher education.

In my experience, most students want to succeed and will, at the very least, give the course syllabus a cursory read. If they aren't reading it, they have their reasons. Some students figure there's no real benefit to reading the syllabus; some professors don't explicitly communicate the expectation it will be read. But the biggest reason students skip such a crucial step is simple: Many syllabi are unreadable. They're too long and clogged with opaque, administration-mandated fine print. Some are written with an eye toward a student challenging a grade-that is to say punitively, from a defensive crouch. The results, writing-wise, resemble the textual equivalent of mashed rutabaga.

Kenyon Wilson, he of the $50 Easter egg, hits on one of the biggest problems with the syllabus today in the CNN piece: "It's analogous to the terms and conditions when you're installing software," he told the network. "Everyone clicks that they've read it when no one ever does."

Exactly. Students skip the syllabus for the same reasons you and I click through T&Cs: They aren't written for us. Corporations compose such documents to their own advantage, and even though we know clicking "I Agree" constitutes total submission, what choice do we have? The power dynamic's the same in too many syllabi. Why wouldn't students see them for what they are-blunt tools of course administration-rather than what they could be?

These are actual sentences that preceded the $50 clue in the offending syllabus: "Consistent with the Faculty Senate Policy on Covid Absences, attendance is an inseparable function of course learning objectives. As a result, skill-based courses in music may be exempt from Covid-related accommodations as a progression in skills must be obtained across the semester to be successful in these courses." For whom, you might ask, is this written? A student? A human? The sentence meant to send students to the $50 wasn't much better.

Burying a $50 clue in your syllabus doesn't make you a bad professor. But the stunt highlights some of higher education's worst assumptions about students, assumptions that serve as barriers to teaching and learning. Beginning the semester by scolding your students for not reading a lumpy mix of policy and admin jargon establishes a relationship based on an insidious premise: These people don't want to learn. Nothing, given all the obstacles today's students face, could be further from the truth.

Research shows that syllabi not only set up expectations for a class, but are usually the first introduction to the professor. In other words, bad ones can create and perpetuate bad relationships. The cumulative effect? We fail, in all senses of the word, the students who most need our help. Certain students already possess the necessary savvy to navigate higher ed's "hidden curriculum," those implicit rules, conventions, and weird cultural norms that seem natural to insiders but are utterly incomprehensible to everyone else. But what about the other students who are questioning whether they belong in college? Too often we reinforce what they may suspect-that they lack the necessary skills or insider knowledge required for success. And that their professor has no interest in teaching them these things.

No longer are most colleges made up of middle-class 18-to-20-year-olds who've stepped directly from well-funded high schools into the college classroom. The reality of higher education has changed, as have the people we serve. "Nontraditional" and first-generation students-those who are older, work full time, take classes part time, who are the first in their families to attend college-now make up the majority in most public institutions and community colleges. For many of our students, when they step on campus, they're stepping into a foreign culture, one with opaque and counterintuitive languages and norms. Assuming these students don't want to learn-rather than assuming they might need extra guidance-not only entrenches fundamental inequities in higher ed, but it undermines what should be our mission: helping students better their economic prospects and intellectual lives.

It doesn't have to be this way. Aaron S. Richmond, a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, is one of many who've worked on making syllabi less focused on the professor or institution and more centered on what should be its primary audience: students. His work has found that a "learner-centered syllabus" creates more useful and collaborative relationships between students and instructors. Students perceive instructors whose syllabi are "learner-centered" as better teachers and people with whom they have more rapport.

Slate Crossword: "Renaissance" Woman, to Fans (Three Letters)

This starts with ditching the negative assumptions about students and starting from a place of trust. Assume, says Richmond, that students want to succeed. Then show them how. The syllabus should make explicit the details of higher education's "hidden curriculum." How many students don't want to bother their professors during "office hours," because the term implies the professor is busy? A lot, it turns out. A syllabus doesn't have to be poetry, but it shouldn't rival terms and conditions in its inhumanity. A learner-centered syllabus should have the feel of a text written by a human being for a group of human beings. Tell your students what they'll learn, and how you'll do it together.

Will this induce 100 percent of students to curl up with a syllabus and a cup of tea (or a White Claw)? No. But we are competing for students' attention, just as our attention is likewise up for grabs-don't think professors aren't zoned out on their phones in department meetings or scrolling Twitter on the other side of Zoom squares. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality. Worse, it ignores our students and their shot at a better life through the very thing that, despite growing cynicism, both students and faculty value and believe in: higher education. If what we're teaching can transform students' lives-if we believe in our larger mission as educators and not simply state-subsidized, on-the-job trainers for future employers-why wouldn't we make the map to success as legible as possible for our students?

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The Professor Who Concocted a $50 "Experiment" on His Students Is Making the Wrong People Feel Smug

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An unread syllabus says more about a professor than students.

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Christina Moore "Seven Ways to Make Your Syllabus More Relevant" (2019)

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Christina Moore "Seven Ways to Make Your Syllabus More Relevant" (2019)

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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Can a syllabus get students excited for your course? What will keep students coming back to it? These seven design elements can help students get the most out of your syllabus, prepare them for the course, and focus on the learning goals ahead. My Engaging Syllabus Design: Example illustrates all of these design elements.

1. Write an introductory message with a personable explanation of the syllabus' layout.

An official welcome to the course can be your "pitch" for the course-why they should be excited about what lays ahead of them. Bain (2004) promotes a "promising" tone in the syllabus, which states what students will gain from your course in both broad and specific terms. From there, use a paragraph or two to simplify the navigation of the syllabus: explain which sections explain what materials they need to be ready, how they can plan ahead with the course schedule, and what a typical class session will look like. Explain how policies and ground rules are meant to support students and make sure they achieve their goals.

2. Humanize yourself in the "Professor Information" section.

Along with the logistical and contact information students need, use this section as an opportunity to help students understand who is leading them through this learning environment.

Explain how you should be addressed. Many higher-ed essays have been dedicated to the topic of how students should address their instructors, and students feel a tension around this topic, as they are told different things by different faculty (or nothing at all). Help students navigate this etiquette by explaining directly how they should address you.

Include an identifying image, whether a profile photo, avatar, or different image that represents you. Use this image in your learning management system (i.e. course webpage) and email profiles as well.

Share a brief bio. Explain your work and academic experience to give students an idea of how you arrived at the front of their classroom. Share your talents outside of course content, hobbies, and other relatable info about yourself.

Express your goals and values as it relates to their success. This can be done in a couple of brief sentences and can enforce that you can work with them beyond speaking from the pulpit. Express if you are most passionate about promoting undergraduate research, service learning, internships, and other student success opportunities that extend beyond tests and homework.

3. Condense policy "legalese," and link out as needed.

While policies get bogged down with fine print, they serve important purposes for students. We want students to feel safe, supported, respected, and responsible. We want students to know the ground rules well ahead of time so that they avoid unpleasant situations later on. Yet the more policies and procedures we include, the less likely students are to benefit from them. Therefore, consider how you can condense policies to the main points students need to know, and provide students links to more information as they need it.

4. Articulate protocol in positives rather than negatives.

Without altering course policies, how can you emphasize positive opportunities rather than penalties? For example, if late assignments receive half credit, explain that these assignments can "earn up to half credit" rather than "lose half credit." It can also help to briefly explain the rationale for these rules.

5. Explain learning expectations, with concrete ways to meet them.

All of the information on our syllabi can still leave students wondering how much time they should expect to dedicate to a course. If students repeatedly seem to misunderstand what is expected of them in and out of class, consider stating some of these expectations. Here are a few examples.

Modes for asking questions. Let students know when to email with a question and outline other options are available to them.

Technology backup plan. Explain how students should use cloud storage and plan on alternative ways to access the Internet to prevent losing their work.

Frequency of course webpage and email access. How often should students check their email for class updates? How often should they be monitoring their grades?

6. Identify opportunities for the class to personalize their syllabus.

Consider these smaller first steps. Ask students to work with you by:

Designing the banner image that should go at the top of the syllabus

Defining "ground rules" for respect and civility (e.g. how to facilitate controversial discussions, technology use).

Suggesting policies and resources that should be added.

Whether you incorporate the changes to the document during class or point them out after the fact, be sure the changes are visible so that students see early on that they can make meaningful contributions to the learning environment.

7. Use heading styles and links in an electronic version of the syllabus.

As you create your syllabus in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, use the headings styles to organize sections of the document. This creates a clickable outline that allows students (and you) to easily navigate the syllabus. Consider sharing this version of the syllabus as well so that students can take advantage of this clickable document. Sharing an electronic version also allows you to link out to additional resources without bloating the syllabus.
Christina Moore @fontanamoore is a virtual faculty developer with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University.

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Seven Ways to Make Your Syllabus More Relevant | Faculty Focus

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Can a syllabus get students excited for your course? What will keep students coming back to it? These seven design elements can help students get the most out of your syllabus, prepare them for the course, and focus on the learning goals ahead. My Engaging Syllabus Design: Example illustrates all of these design elements.

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M.S. Palmer, L.B. Wheeler, I. Aneece "Not Your Granddaddy's Syllabus" (2015)

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M.S. Palmer, L.B. Wheeler, I. Aneece "Not Your Granddaddy's Syllabus" (2015)

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Sara Fulmer "Preparing a Learning-Focused Syllabus" (2018)

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Sara Fulmer "Preparing a Learning-Focused Syllabus" (2018)

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Dr. Sara M. Fulmer is the Teaching and Learning Assessment Specialist at Wellesley College. She supports faculty with implementing evidence-based teaching strategies, and assessing the impact of various teaching approaches on student learning and engagement. Her areas of research include student motivation in challenging contexts and teacher professional development. She received her B.A., B.Ed., and M.A. from Brock University in Ontario, Canada, and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Notre Dame. You can find her on Twitter @sara_fulmer or at her Wellesley College Faculty page

Do you want to create syllabi that are more useful for, and used by, your students?

Do you want your syllabus to reflect your student-centered or active learning teaching approach?

Are you beginning to feel like the central purpose and goals of your course are getting lost in a growing list of policies and minor details?

Does your work involve supporting teachers with designing or redesigning their courses or syllabi?

. Sara previously contributed a guest post on how manipulatives can hinder learning.

"... even the most detailed syllabus cannot save an instructor from being deluged with the same questions from students over and over. This is because, of course, even the most detailed information is useless to a person who does not take the time to read it. And few things are less read than the average course syllabus... This thought should not discourage instructors; instead it should motivate to think about the overall purpose(s) of a syllabus, as well as the creative and effective ways of constructing a syllabus."

Muveddet Harris, from this blog on how a syllabus quiz can help students learn.

This digest offers one evidence-based approach to addressing the common teaching challenge of a course syllabus that is unread and underutilized. If you answer "yes" to any of the following questions, this digest may be relevant for you:

The resources in this digest focus on syllabi in higher education, but could be adapted for K-12. If you're interested in general resources on what components should be included in an effective syllabus, check out our previous digest on how to prepare a syllabus.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, it's going in the syllabus.
- Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay) March 24, 2016

What is the purpose of a syllabus? For you? For your students?

A syllabus has many purposes: it can be a planning and reference document, a communication tool, and, in some cases, a contract between teachers and students.

Do you have a syllabus nearby? Skim through it.

What does the instructor appear to value?

What's emphasized? What's minimized?

Is the main focus on the learner or the content?

As mentioned in Mano Singham's Death to the Syllabus!, "what [traditional] syllabi often omit is any mention of learning." To me, this seems problematic, particularly for those of us who want students to leave our courses having learned not only content, but also more effective learning strategies.

What does a syllabus that supports students' learning and motivation look like?

Syllabi fall on a continuum from content-centered to learner-centered. A learner-centered syllabus teaches students how to learn in the course by offering practical strategies and advice, meaningful rationales, and clear expectations, using an engaging, inviting, and supportive tone (1, 2). For example, your syllabus can introduce students to the six strategies for effective learning, or offer advice and links to information about study skills and how to use the six strategies. Although learner-centered syllabi include the traditional components of a syllabus (instructor information, schedule, policies, assignments), these components are reframed and reordered to focus on what students need to know to learn effectively.

Is changing my syllabus to be more learner-centered worth the time and effort?

Think of your syllabus as the first impression that students have of you and your course. A learner-centered syllabus is capable of generating positive motivation for your course before a student ever steps into your classroom (2). Although changing your syllabus is unlikely to improve student learning on its own, your syllabus can be a useful tool that supports students' learning and engagement throughout the course.

But will students even notice? Yes! Students who receive a learner-centered syllabus rate the instructor, course, and syllabus more positively than students who receive a content-centered syllabus (3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

The following resources offer advice, examples, and tools to help you evaluate your current syllabi and revise your syllabi to be more learner-centered. My one suggestion: dream big but start small. Though you may feel an urge to overhaul your entire syllabus, this will be an ongoing and iterative project. Start where you see the most need or where you're most excited, perhaps by changing the course description to focus on intriguing or beautiful questions, or revising the tone and language of your policies.

1) Constructing a Learner-Centered Syllabus: One Professor's Journey By Aaron S. Richmond @AaronSRichmond

How does my syllabus communicate ideas about power and control in my course? Why should I create a learner-centered syllabus? How can I create a learner-centered syllabus? This IDEA paper responds to these questions by summarizing the evidence on the benefits of learner-centered syllabi for student motivation and achievement, and providing a checklist to evaluate the degree to which your syllabus is learner-centered. Examples, such as the one below, are included to show the difference between content-centered and learner-centered syllabi.

2) Measuring the Promise: A Valid and Reliable Syllabus Rubric By Michael Palmer, Dorothe Bach, and Adriana Streifer at the University of Virginia's Center for Teaching Excellence @cte_uva

This team at UVa developed a rubric to assess the degree to which a syllabus is learner-centered. To help you make choices about where to begin when revising your syllabus, the suggestions are categorized as "essential," "important," or "less-important." The website includes the rubric and scoring guide, as well as detailed annotated syllabi. The rubric document also reviews the research and theory behind the rubric, drawing from Fink's notion of significant learning, theories of student motivation, and Wiggins and McTighe's description of backwards design.

3) A Learner-Centered Syllabus Helps Set the Tone for Learning By Mary Bart @facultyfocus

This brief article outlines five features of a learner-centered syllabus, emphasizing that the main difference between a learner-centered and content-centered syllabus is tone, not content. The article also addresses concerns about syllabus length, concluding that there is no optimal length. Rather, you should think about whether the syllabus is meeting your goals and providing a framework for learning. I was particularly struck by this teacher's a-ha moment about the syllabus as a contract:

"... when you really think about a contract, and you have someone sign a contract, that, by nature, sets up an adversarial relationship. The implied message is, 'I don't expect that you're going to live up to this unless I have it in writing.' That used to be the tone in my classroom-it's not the tone anymore. That approach doesn't foster a good learning environment."

4) Designing a Course Syllabus: A Learning-Centered Approach By Brigham Young University Center for Teaching and Learning @byuctl

This resource provides an example of a learner-centered syllabus with annotations that offer practical tips for each component of the syllabus. This resource is a straightforward way to compare your syllabus to a learner-centered syllabus, and embark on making small changes section-by-section.

5) The Promising Syllabus By James M. Lang @LangOnCourse

Interested in taking your learner-centered syllabus to the next level? Lang tackles the idea of a learner-centered syllabus through the lens of Ken Bain's idea of a "promising syllabus" from the book, "What the Best College Teachers Do" (an excellent book, by the way!). The promising syllabus makes a promise to students about the knowledge or skills they will gain by the end of the semester. The promising syllabus is also the beginning of a conversation about how students' learning will be evaluated, drawing on the idea that students learn better when they feel they have some control over their learning.

References:

(1) Cullen, R., & Harris, M. (2009). Assessing learner-centeredness through course syllabi. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 34, 115-25.

(2) Palmer, M. S., Bach, D. J., & Streifer, A. C. (2014). Measuring the promise: A learning-focused syllabus rubric. To Improve the Academy, 33, 14-36.

(3) Palmer, M. S., Wheeler, L. B., & Aneece, I. (2015). Not your grandaddy's syllabus: Investigating student perceptions of course syllabi. Retrieved from: http://podnetwork.org/content/uploads/Not_Your_Grandaddys_Syllabus_Palmer.pdf

(4) Palmer, M.S., Wheeler, L. B., & Aneece, I. (2016). Does the document matter? The evolving role of syllabi in higher education. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 48, 36-47.

(5) Harnish, R. J., & Bridges, K. R. (2011). Effect of syllabus tone: students' perceptions of instructor and course. Social Psychology of Education, 14, 319-330.

(6) Ishiyama, J. T., & Hartlaub, S. (2002). Does the wording of syllabi affect student course assessment in introductory political science classes? Political Science & Politics, 35, 567-570.

(7) Richmond, A. S., Slattery, J., Morgan, R., Mitchell, N., & Becknell, J. (2016). Can a learner-centered syllabus change students' perceptions of student-professor rapport and master teacher behaviors? Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 2, 159-168.
Every Sunday, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don't hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click Weekly Digest #59: Making the Most of Your Summer Weekly Digest #60: Tools for Better Science Communication Weekly Digest #61: Does Mindset Matter? Weekly Digest #62: Digital Literacy: A Crucial Skill in Today's World Weekly Digest #63: Summer Safety . Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:

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"... even the most detailed syllabus cannot save an instructor from being deluged with the same questions from students over and over. This is because, of course, even the most detailed information is useless to a person who does not take the time to ...

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Mary Bart "A Learner-Centered Syllabus" (2015)

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Mary Bart "A Learner-Centered Syllabus" (2015)

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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At its most basic level, the syllabus is used to communicate information about the course, the instructor, learning objectives, assignments, grading policies, due dates, the university's academic integrity statement, and, in some cases, an increasingly long list of strongly worded admonitions on what is and isn't acceptable behavior in the college classroom.

For some faculty, the syllabus is a contract between them and their students, complete with a dotted line where students sign their name indicating they consent to the terms of the agreement. Lolita Paff, an associate professor at Penn State Berks, is a reformed syllabus-as-a-contract believer.

"I will confess, as a former business professional, I did view the syllabus as a contract," said Paff. "But when you really think about a contract, and you have someone sign a contract, that, by nature, sets up an adversarial relationship. The implied message is, 'I don't expect that you're going to live up to this unless I have it in writing.' That used to be the tone in my classroom-it's not the tone anymore. That approach doesn't foster a good learning environment."

What is a learner-centered syllabus?

Today, Paff takes a more learner-centered approach to her syllabi. A learner-centered syllabus can take many forms, but it often includes one or more of these features:

A rationale for course objectives and assignments. A syllabus can be used to set the stage and the context for the course and where it sits within the discipline. Paff encourages faculty to be intentional about what is and isn't included in the course, and then share that with students. Why are these assignments a part of the course? Why are we studying this particular topic?

Shared decision making. In some cases, a learner-centered syllabus means allowing students to have some say in course policies and procedures. Depending on the course and the students, Paff allows some flexibility in decision making for assignment weights and options. While first-year students typically won't have the maturity to make these types of decisions, juniors and seniors can often thrive when given some choice in how they will demonstrate their learning.

Warnings of potential pitfalls. There are often certain components of a course that students find more difficult than others. Giving students a heads-up of what to look out for or behaviors that could impede success (e.g., "You really want to look out for X, and here's a strategy so that it doesn't happen.") can go a long way. "That advice is going to be well received by students," said Paff. "It sets the stage that the teacher really cares about them, not just what's going to be covered and what's expected of them, but that you're in this together."

An opportunity for students to set teacher expectations. On the first day of class, as Paff goes over the syllabus and outlines her expectations for students, she asks what they expect of her. The students break into groups to discuss past learning experiences and offer up one or two policies that they think will help them learn, which Paff types into a document during the exercise. Throughout the semester, the class revisits the students' recommendations. "I might say, 'See, you asked me to provide review sessions, so I'm extending my office hours before the next exam,'" Paff explained. "It's another opportunity to talk about what we are learning, where we are in the course, what our expectations were for the class, and how are we progressing."

Recommendations for staying on track. Every syllabus includes a course calendar, but a learner-centered syllabus could also provide guidance on how to tackle specific projects-from how much time something will take to strategies for gathering the necessary resources, Paff said. In addition, students might also need help in evaluating and monitoring their progress throughout the course.

"When it comes to a learner-centered syllabus vs. a traditional syllabus, it's not really a difference so much in content as it is in tone," said Paff. "There's a shift in emphasis from 'What are we going to cover?' to 'How can the course promote learning and intellectual development in students?' So it's going to contain roughly the same information, but the language used to convey the policies, procedures, and content is different in order to foster a more engaging and shared learning environment."

How long should a syllabus be?

One of the big questions faculty have regarding their syllabi centers on length. While there is no hard-and-fast rule about the optimal length of a syllabus, there is often a tendency for policy creep to push the page count higher than necessary as faculty try to anticipate every possible scenario that could occur throughout the semester.

"My syllabi started off at two to three pages, and then as I tried to close every loophole that would develop, it grew, and grew, and grew to the point where I had an entire page on nothing but classroom policies and procedures for missed exams and absences, and how I wanted homework submitted, and it grew to this five-page detailed tome," said Paff. "Now there's nothing wrong with a four or five page syllabus, if it serves your purpose and it's the kind of document that you revisit with students, and it's one that sets a framework for learning."

Rather than worry about syllabus length, Paff encourages faculty to think about the tone of the syllabus and the order of the content they're presenting.

For example, consider the following course description she used in a syllabus years ago:

Econ102 is an introduction to microeconomic analyses and policies. Microeconomic deals with the behavior of individuals and firms and how the behavior is influenced by government policy. The principal objective of the course is to enable students to analyze major microeconomic issues, clearly and critically.

Now compare that to the description she uses now:

Why should you want to study microeconomics? Alfred Marshall defined economics as the study of people in the ordinary business of life. Every choice you make, from what time to get up ... whether or not to go to class ... how long to study, or work, or how much to eat, or where to go on Thursday nights ... ALL of it incorporates microeconomic principles. Microeconomics helps us to understand how people and firms make choices, how markets are organized, why and how markets behave differently, and the effects government interventions have in market outcomes. I LOVE this course, and I am hoping that by the end of the semester you will develop a deep appreciation for the subject.

"A lot of times I feel that students think that a course happens at them and they're not truly engaged and a part of the learning experience," Paff said. "If the syllabus is structured in a way and the content is delivered in a way that they're an active part of what happens in the class, and they have some control over how they learn and what they learn, then the random arbitrariness of learning is minimized."

With a new school year about to begin, take some time to reflect on how you would characterize the tone of your syllabus and what you could do to make it more learner-centered.

© Magna Publications. All rights reserved.

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A Learner-Centered Syllabus Helps Set the Tone for Learning

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At its most basic level, the syllabus is used to communicate information about the course, the instructor, learning objectives, assignments, grading policies, due dates, the university's academic integrity statement, and, in some cases, an increasingly long list of strongly worded admonitions on what is and isn't acceptable behavior in the college classroom.

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Daniel Stanford's "The Best AI Syllabus Policies I've Seen So Far" (2024)

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Daniel Stanford's "The Best AI Syllabus Policies I've Seen So Far" (2024)

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In the AI workshops I've been running, many instructors have asked for example AI policy statements they can reuse in their syllabi. For most of 2023, I would direct faculty to the fantastic crowdsourced list of AI policies that Lance Eaton organized. As much as I love this resource, it now contains over 100 examples and may be overwhelming for some instructors.

To create a more streamlined list of my favorite policy statements, I made a copy of Lance's spreadsheet and did the following:

Removed policies that didn't have info in the "rights for reuse" column.

Reviewed all policies that were eligible for reuse and removed any that felt a bit too short or generic to address the key concerns I'm hearing from faculty.

Added a notes column where I documented any unique elements that caught my eye as I reviewed each policy.

Added a column for "permissiveness" so users can quickly find examples that match how restrictive or permissive they'd like their AI policy to be.

Added a "sort order" column and assigned a value of 1 to the policies I thought were the best starting point for beginners. I went back and forth about whether or not to include this column. My goal was to provide busy instructors with a way to sort and view my "top 10" while leaving room for a few additional policy statements that could also be helpful.

You can view my annotated AI syllabus policy list here. If this list still feels a bit overwhelming, I've included three of my favorite policy statements at the end of this article.

Here are the common themes I've noticed in the more effective and detailed AI policy statements I've seen.

1. If AI is prohibited or required, explain why.

2. Connect AI use to something familiar (e.g., getting help from a friend or tutor).

3. Provide examples of acceptable and/or unacceptable use.

4. Acknowledge ethical issues such as data privacy, bias, inaccuracy, intellectual property violations, environmental impact, etc.

5. Note your AI documentation and citation requirements. This might include screenshots, transcripts, documents with "track changes" enabled, APA AI citations guidelines, or MLA AI citation guidelines.

6. Explain how misuse will be addressed.

7. Encourage students to ask questions if your policy is unclear.

Hey everyone! I take a unique approach to writing and content creation compared to some other professors. To me, writing happens in a network between people and technology (not just you sitting in front of a computer typing away). AI is now part of this network, whether we want it to be or not.

My view is that AI will impact us no matter what. But we also have the power to shape how AI develops if we engage with it thoughtfully. This class gives you a safe space to creatively experiment with AI without shame, fear, or guilt.

⭐️ I want to be clear: You will not be penalized just for using AI in this course. Unless I say otherwise for a specific assignment, feel free to try out AI writing assistants and generate content with these tools.

I'll share prompts and activities to guide your AI exploration. These are optional - use what's helpful to you! AI is not always the right or best choice for a given writing activity. We'll also discuss our experiences openly as a class to promote mindful AI integration.

While experimenting freely, keep these points in mind:

AI can demonstrate biases and inaccuracies at times. Always validate the content before accepting it.

Be cautious with data privacy. Don't input anything too personal or private. You can't control where it ends up. If you wouldn't post it on the internet, don't give it to an AI.

Recognize the limitations. AI doesn't truly comprehend facts or meaning yet. It makes guesses, which means it can confidently provide false information. AI content may initially seem impressive, but usually is not as good as you think it is. I call these AI goggles. Take care whenever using AI-generated text.

⭐️ Also keep in mind that my AI-forward policy only applies to this class. Other professors likely have different rules. Using AI without permission could violate academic integrity policies. So always check the specific guidelines for each class first!

Let's explore AI as a creative tool to augment our skills, not replace them. I'm excited to see what we can discover together! Let me know if you ever have any other questions.

Shows vulnerability. The instructor is learning, too, and shows this by saying, "I'm excited to see what we can discover together." (Emphasis mine.)

You can learn more about Dr. Cummings' work at iSophist.com.

We treat AI-based assistance, such as ChatGPT and Github Copilot, the same way we treat collaboration with other people: you are welcome to talk about your ideas and work with other people, both inside and outside the class, as well as with AI-based assistants. However, all work you submit must be your own. You should never include in your assignment anything that was not written directly by you without proper citation (including quotation marks and in-line citation for direct quotes). Including anything you did not write in your assignment without proper citation will be treated as an academic misconduct case.

If you are unsure where the line is between collaborating with AI and copying from AI, we recommend the following heuristics:

Never hit "Copy" within your conversation with an AI assistant. You can copy your own work into your conversation, but do not copy anything from the conversation back into your assignment. Instead, use your interaction with the AI assistant as a learning experience, then let your assignment reflect your improved understanding.

Do not have your assignment and the AI agent itself open on your device at the same time. Similar to above, use your conversation with the AI as a learning experience, then close the interaction down, open your assignment, and let your assignment reflect your revised knowledge.

This heuristic includes avoiding using AI assistants that are directly integrated into your composition environment: just as you should not let a classmate write content or code directly into your submission, so also you should avoid using tools that directly add content to your submission. Deviating from these heuristics does not automatically qualify as academic misconduct; however, following these heuristics essentially guarantees your collaboration will not cross the line into misconduct.

Want to see the policy in context? View the course syllabus for OMS CS7637: Knowledge-Based AI.

All assignments in this course are individual assignments. In this class, you will often be discussing course concepts with your classmates and with me, but when you sit down to complete a quiz, write a discussion post, or work on a project, I expect you to do the actual work independently. This is the only way that I will be able to tell what you have learned.

You may not use non-TWU "tutoring services" such as Chegg or Course Hero for this course. Paying someone else to do your classwork is the opposite of learning.

You may not use artificial intelligence tools to complete your assignments in this course.

Your major projects in this course are open-book and open-note. However, plagiarism from any source is prohibited, both by university policy and by federal law. Any written assignments, including quizzes, projects, and discussion posts, must be your own, original work. You cannot directly copy word-for-word from any source, including a textbook, even if you provide a citation. Copying someone else's words denies credit to the original author, and it also robs you of the opportunity to deepen your understanding by putting things in your own words.

We will be using the Turnitin tool on many assignments in this course as a way to teach you to identify and avoid plagiarism. You will be able to see your similarity report as soon as you submit an assignment. If you notice that you have accidentally committed plagiarism, you should rewrite your assignment and resubmit it. If I notice that you have accidentally plagiarized, I will contact you and ask you to rewrite and resubmit, and I will not grade your assignment until I receive your new submission.

Includes transparency about use of AI detection software. The instructor states that students will be able to see their Turnitin similarity report. While numerous institutions have disabled Turnitin's AI detection feature out of concerns about potential bias, inaccuracy, and the negative impact of false positives, many instructors currently rely on it. Ideally, these instructors should treat a high similarity score as a starting point for a discussion with the student rather than an immediate assumption of guilt. Providing students with access to their reports and encouraging them to discuss concerns about false positives may help mitigate some of the potential harm caused by AI detection tools.

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The Best AI Syllabus Policies I've Seen So Far

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In the AI workshops I've been running, many instructors have asked for example AI policy statements they can reuse in their syllabi. For most of 2023, I would direct faculty to the fantastic crowdsourced list of AI policies that Lance Eaton organized.

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Baylor University "The Self and the Syllabus" (2020)

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Baylor University "The Self and the Syllabus" (2020)

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Christopher Richmann and Bonnie Stachowiak Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast No. 418 "The Self and the Syllabus" (2022)

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Christopher Richmann and Bonnie Stachowiak Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast No. 418 "The Self and the Syllabus" (2022)

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[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 418 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast: The Self and Syllabus with Christopher Richmann.

[00:00:12] Production Credit: Produced by innovative learning, maximizing human potential.

[music]

[00:00:21] Bonni: Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I'm Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Christopher Richmann PhD is Assistant Director for the Academy for Teaching and Learning and affiliate faculty in the Department of Religion. His research focuses on the Pentecostal charismatic tradition and Lutheran popular theology. Dr. Richmann is the author of Living in Bible Times: F. F. Bosworth and the Pentecostal Pursuit of the Supernatural and Called: Recovering Lutheran Principles for Ministry and Vocation.

His articles have appeared in Wesleyan Theological Journal, Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, and Lutheran Quarterly. In the areas of teaching and learning, Dr. Richmann has special interests in academic authority, teaching as a vocation, and how theories of human development influence teaching. He's published research in International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Teaching in Higher Education, and the Wabash Center Journal on Teaching, and along with Lenore Wright, Dr. Richmann edited Called to Teach: Excellence, Commitment, and Community in Christian Higher Education. Christopher, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:02:06] Christopher Richmann: Thank you so much for having me on, Bonni.

[00:02:09] Bonni: The first moment that I heard about your study, one word stood out to me so much, and that is the word "congruence". I'm guessing since you put it in the title of a journal article, it means something to you. Christopher, what does congruence evoke for you?

[00:02:25] Christopher: Oh, yes. This is such a huge issue in my head as I'm thinking about the teaching task. There's growing, I think, interest in the issue of the self that we bring into the classroom, and our colleagues, especially who are informed by critical pedagogy will really help us re-remember that we are embodied selves, and we bring all of that self into the classroom, into the tasks of teaching, but it's not just the embodied self.

It's all the artifacts that go along with our teaching as well. There's assignments that we ask students to do. There's messages that we send them through our learning management system or via email. As we'll probably talk about here in more detail, there's the syllabus, and all of these things are- depending on your philosophy, they may be part of the self, or they may be a residue of the self, whatever language works there for you, but it's certainly true that they're reflecting the self in some way.

As we think more seriously as teachers about bringing that full self into the classroom for our students, I think it really behooves us to look more closely at all of the aspects of the self, all the artifacts of the self to see whether or not these things are conveying the same message about who we are.

[00:03:54] Bonni: Over the time that you have been teaching and also working with other faculty, what have been some meaningful practices that have helped you just get in touch with how you perceive yourself? Because before we ever assess whether or not our perception matches others, we first have to start with that self. What have been some good practices or perhaps even authors or other things that come to mind as you think about the work that we need to do on our own perception of self?

[00:04:25] Christopher: One of the things that we've done in several different venues at my institution with faculty and with graduate student instructors as well, is what we call micro-teaching, which is just a session where you deliver a mini-module of your course content for your peers. Sometimes we even record those. That becomes something that the instructor can refer back to, and whether or not we record them, we're always giving feedback, written feedback, and then in discussion as well.

For some instructors, it can be a real eye-opener, how you are being perceived. Even just to very simple things like, "Man, I didn't realize I was talking that fast," or, "I can't believe I'm always fiddling with my rings on my finger when I'm talking in front of people." It could be a very basic presentation, stuff like that, but then it can also amount to, "Man, I didn't realize how many jargon-laden terms I'm using with students. I know that that can be an obstacle when I'm teaching, say, a freshman-level course. That's something that I can really start working on."

[00:05:35] Bonni: Boy, that idea of whether it's finding a mirror for ourselves, or in my case, very early on, I can remember being 22 years old and teaching some of my early computer classes, and just having an audio recording and listening back. I mean, it has been many decades since then and I can still hear myself. "Right now, we're going to go ahead and go up to the File Menu. Right now-" the phrases that I would rely on and that I'm sure could have been distracting, but it is such an emotional journey to go on, to hold that mirror up to oneself or to listen to oneself.

It is definitely not for the faint of heart. I think sometimes it can be helpful to know that there is lots of hope and goodness on the other side of that incredibly hard work that it is, either to do that for ourselves or even, I guess, riskier in some cases, although maybe in other cases, it's safer because we can be so hard on ourselves sometimes, but to allow other people to invite other people to do that for us.

[00:06:44] Christopher: In some- you used the word safer or less risky, we've also used more just self-reflective exercises. There's one online called the Teaching Perspectives Inventory, and we've also used the Grasha scale, the Teaching Styles scale with faculty.

These are just descriptive. They're not prescriptive at all. They're just descriptive to help you find some categories and some language about what you actually care about or what you actually intend to do with students sometimes on a meta-level, but then how that may or may not actually be incarnated in your teaching practices.

[00:07:31] Bonni: Yes. Those self-awareness things can be so helpful. I think for me even, Christopher, they have helped to even sometimes just expand either my imagination or expand my evoked set for what is possible, not always able to initially recognize where I have incongruence because I'm just modeling off of what was taught to me or through explicit or implicit ways.

Sometimes that's in the case of a syllabus, which I know we're going to transition into here in a moment, in some cases, this syllabus could have been written many, many, many moons ago and by individuals or an individual that doesn't match up with who I want to show up as, but I might not even know the words or the practices until I engage in some of these self-reflective activities as you've described here. Let's look at this specific study though. Talk a little bit about what the goal was. What did you and your co-authors want to explore here and question?

[00:08:35] Christopher: First, let me give a shout-out to my co-authors Courtney Kurinec and Matt Millsap who helped me work on this study and this manuscript. We got this idea from a workshop that we hosted my at my Center for Teaching and Learning, we hosted in partnership with our libraries, and we've got a wonderful digital scholarship librarian by the name of Joshua Ben here who was looking at- he was helping another researcher look at the emotional associations of language in sermons as a historical kind of approach to- a data approach in the humanities.

It really just sparked something for me about- the same kind of tool could be used for not just any document, and that's really exciting, but specifically in the teaching world, any of our teaching documents. What looms largest for most of us is the syllabus. I mean, looms largest both in a psychological way and in just the sheer mass of a volume of this document as well.

This was just the beginning of a really fruitful partnership to find the right tools and the right prior scholarship to build on, to get some handle on how we could do this. It is certainly not the only way one could do this, but it is a way to do this.

[00:10:03] Bonni: Thank you so much for that background. I'm chuckling to myself as I think about Joshua's work. It sounds absolutely fascinating because in what other context would we most want our values to be aligned with the words we're espousing than in a place of worship? That sounds absolutely fascinating and interesting to see some of the roots and how this all came about.

It's also fun, Christopher, when we think about getting people with different disciplines which I know you did through the study. You've got people that you looked at syllabi from the STEM fields, from anthropology, I mean from all these different disciplines, and how when we can have conversations like that across disciplines, some of the riches that come about. What were your research questions that you wanted to explore having to do with the syllabus in this particular study?

[00:10:56] Christopher: Well, we really just wanted to answer- the most basic form of the question is, am I coming across on my syllabus? Do students meet me in my syllabus, or do they meet something else? Do they meet the institution primarily in my syllabus? Do they meet some kind of Frankenstein patchwork of institution and discipline and me in the syllabus? We kind of came at this with the assumption and we stated clearly the assumption that instructors would want to pursue congruence or alignment between their perspectives of themselves as teachers and their syllabus.

I will say as an aside though, in one instance, I had a faculty member who participated in our study here at our institution who specifically sent me an email and said, "I just want you to know that I intentionally play good cop and bad cop with my syllabus." I thought that was a very interesting take. So, in other words, I believe what he was communicating to me is that I have a pretty hard line and strict language, especially around policies and protocols on my syllabus.

Then if students come to me, I'm a little softer. So there's a whole set of conversations that we could probably be having on that, that we don't have time for. In general, we're going to assume that instructors want their students to meet them, some true version of themselves in the syllabus.

[00:12:38] Bonni: We're looking at the ways in which there is congruence between the syllabus, and ideally, we want to have those positive outcomes for our students and how those things get informed by our self-perceptions and our teaching styles. That's the overarching goal of your study. Now, we're going to get to it, Christopher. How do we do that? How do we show up in our syllabi in ways that either are congruent or not with our self-perceptions and our teaching styles?

[00:13:13] Christopher: Well, it may sound like since I spent some time doing this study and I continue to work on this open access tool that we've got that I'm just taking the syllabus for granted or assuming the necessity of the syllabus, but really I'm not. I'm pretty sympathetic to arguments like Mano Singham and others who say, "Who told us we need a syllabus? Most of human history, people learned without a syllabus." There's something to be said for that too, and yet just recognizing that it is so common, and in many institutions, it's required. It's nearly ubiquitous to have this document.

Where the syllabus does exist, it's going to communicate, it can't help but communicate about the course and about the instructor. There's been a fair amount of research into how the language of a syllabus might affect students in terms of their motivation or how they see the instructor being approachable or flexible and all of that. What we noticed when we were looking at that research is the researchers tended to just be relying on intuitions about what was friendly or unfriendly language, what was a warm or a cold tone, what was authoritarian, or what was not.

The question emerged for us, is there a way to inject this with some level of objectivity? When you're dealing with language, it's always really slippery. As soon as you feel like you've got it in your hands, it slips out, but what we landed on was this scale that goes back decades in psychological research from Albert Mehrabian. His theory was that human language basically communicates emotions on three dimensions; pleasure, arousal, and dominance, and we have never really liked those particular terms.

We've tended to discuss this in terms of valence, alertness, and control, which mean the exact same thing. Valence is how positive or negative the emotion is. Alertness is just as it says, is there a high energy and alertness here, or is there a dullness or a boringness to it? Then control is, "Do I feel like I'm in control in this situation, or do I feel like I'm being controlled in this situation?"

Again, with the help of Digital Scholarship Librarian and my colleagues, we created this way where you can run a syllabus through this algorithm, and you get a mean score on all three of those dimensions. The tool that we've got right now actually takes it one step further and gives you suggestions for changing words that might be particularly far in terms of your sense of self versus what your syllabus is scoring as.

[00:16:14] Bonni: The one that to me brings up a lot of questions having to do our teaching, I think we could have multiple episodes and just be getting started on, is the one around dominance and around control. That's an area that, in my teaching, as I think about over the last couple of decades, that probably has changed the most, I tend throughout my time teaching to have felt pretty joyous while I'm doing it. If you asked me to fill out the scale I would probably show up as a pretty happy person feeling like I was meant to teach and getting a lot of joy from that.

I would probably be very energetic on most of the days until I get home, and then after dinner, that's when it all comes- all the energy that's been expended. On the control one, I would have thought that the more that you could control the room- but we all know who's in the room. Today it's far less about control and more about the joy that you can find in the unexpected, that, yes, having the structure there is very helpful so that you can have the unexpected things. That structure is there less about control and more as then inviting this interplay that can happen between teacher and learner.

To me, Christopher, the best thing that happens is when you can't really recognize who's the teacher and who's the learner because we're both doing so much of it in a beautiful context like that. I'm curious for you, but as an educator and also from the people that you've worked with all these years, has this changed for you, your own thought about control in a classroom, and are you noticing that showing up on the people that you work with?

[00:18:00] Christopher: I've been thinking about this and I'm doing some writing right now about a very near concept to this issue of control which is authority. My working hypothesis, not to over-psychologize here, but my working hypothesis is that most instructors' concerns for control are bred out of insecurities. We want to get to that part that is an experience that's it's really Zen when you get to that place where you can say, "I don't need to have control over this situation. The subject is alive, and it's doing its will among us, and the students are going to look to me for some guardrails and for some assurance that what we're doing is headed somewhere, but that's going to be something that I don't need to assert. That's something that's going to be already understood in the context of the relationships that I have with students."

I try often to nudge faculty in this direction of, "What would it mean if you weren't worried about looking like you were ignorant about something or if you didn't always have a standard answer to some kind of protocol, all these control things that we have?" I'm not sure yet where every conversation that we have right now is in this shadow, I've started using this language of the long shadow of COVID. This is I think another issue, another aspect of our teaching that over the next couple of years, I think we'll see whether or not something has changed in terms of how we think about authority and how we think about control because frankly a lot of us had to change the way that we approached that during the pandemic.

[00:19:55] Bonni: The other thing that you're bringing to mind, Christopher, is back to self-perception. I might like to think of myself as not finding control to be particularly important to me, but I do believe in the research around practices such as high-structure classes or retrieval practice. All these things require good facilitation skills, which are going to require- I was mentioning my first computer classes, where I had a lot of fluff words, "Go to this," and, "Right now we're going to go ahead and do this," and learning how to be more declarative when giving people instructions so that the really important things can come across and all of that.

I also have been teaching for decades and started out quite a bit different, I'm sure, in terms of appearances, and also quite a bit different in terms of my own confidence level. I can vividly remember, early on, how terrifying it was to get a question I didn't know the answer to. That just felt, oh, just such a vulnerable thing. Today, to ever think that any of us knows anything about anything just makes me laugh. That Dunning-Kruger model comes to mind quite a bit, of once you know a little bit about something, you can become quite well aware you know nothing about it. [laughs]

I think the idea that we might get questions we didn't know the answer to, back to your original hypothesis, that a lot of these feelings that we have around authority can be born out of a feeling of insecurity, and then what would it look like if you felt like you didn't need to be insecure, all of this definitely comes to mind.

This came out a little bit actually in your research, the idea of can we- I'm sorry, I'm going to have to- What I'm about to say didn't come out in your research, but it's reminding me of something that did. That is the idea of, I'm thinking now, Christopher, if we're talking to someone who is newer at this, who still feels in their stomach just that wretched feeling of, "Oh my gosh. What if I'm found out that I don't know all of the answers to all of the questions that they have?" then, to me, can we behave our way a little bit until enough time has passed?

A common thing for me, Christopher, is not overly-apologizing. If you're having technical problems, they don't need to hear every single [laughs] step that you're trying to take verbally. You could actually just be trying to, in behind the scenes, figure it out and then have another alternative plan rather than, a lot of times, those over-apologizing that came in. Something that came out in the research specifically was this connection between how I'm showing up for my teaching and then how I'm feeling. There was some interplay there. Could you talk a little bit about that interplay and what showed up in your research?

[00:22:54] Christopher: Yes. I don't know if listeners will be familiar with Grasha's teaching-style inventory, but we did find that in his more- He's got these five teaching styles, and no one is only one. He's very clear about- You'll land in a cross-section or a cluster of these. It actually came out pretty intuitively that if your teaching style was expert, for instance, which in Grasha's language means that you come in and you present yourself as the one who knows. This is a language I usually use, the one who knows.

To get back to our authority conversation, if that's the place you are seating your authority, then it becomes pretty easy to make you insecure. All I have to do is ask you a question about something you don't know, and then all of a sudden, you're thrown off. What we found here is using the language of that teaching style's inventory that, for instance, the expert also had a higher dominance reading. We found some things here that are fairly intuitive, and then we also found the personal model teaching style generally had a higher positive effect of their teaching. Some of these were pretty strong correlations.

Without knowing exactly which is the chicken and which is the egg, we can start to talk to faculty and say, "Well, for instance, if you feel like you don't have as much joy in your teaching as you might want to or thought that you should at this stage in your career, let's take a look at the language around the personal model style of teaching. Are there some practices that you can begin to use that you see in that, that are true to you, but that might also have the effect of just bringing you more enjoyment in your teaching?" That opens up so many opportunities for faculty development.

[00:25:02] Bonni: Before we get to the recommendation segment of the podcast, I did want to ask you to talk a little bit about what's in the appendix of your journal article, the author's sample syllabus comparison. I'm going to encourage people to go and read this for yourself because this one page, page nine, is a gold mine for us thinking about the kind of congruence we might want to have.

On the left side, you have the original and on the right you have the revised. Starts with what the- it used to sound like required books, and now it talks about what book you need. It used to talk about attendance and student decorum, and now it says, "How to be a part of this class." Lots of beautiful language. The very first thing that's on the side that's the revision, "My invitation to you". I'm walking into this document. I'm not even taking this class, and I feel invited to be a part of the conversation that's coming about.

Very early on here, "What I think about teaching and learning. Teaching is a joy for me because I love the material, the ongoing process of discovery, and the experience of expanding the ranks of those who think and care about the material I love." What are some other things that come to your mind, Christopher, as you look at this rewrite of a syllabus?

[00:26:32] Christopher: This rewrite is not contrived in any way. As I'm looking at this split screen here of the original syllabus language and the revised, this is a revision that I actually went through. I saw myself developing as an instructor, leaps and bounds, just by going through this exercise. Really, when I got my own scores on the survey and my original syllabus and saw some incongruences there, I thought, "Well, what can I do to change this?"

There's really two levels, I think, that emerged. One is, "Let's just change some words." You mentioned the word "required". So many of us have the word required somewhere in our syllabus. That's a pretty low scoring when it comes to valence, or positive or negative. That's a negative kind of word based on this tool that we're using. What are other ways that I could communicate that same thing? The book that you need.

As scholars, we're trained to try to be really concise. I'm going to just throw it out there that you might have to use more words, but you will get them across in ways that maybe better reflect yourself as an instructor. When you read from the original syllabus, that phrase attendance and student decorum, I just want to hide in a cave. I just want to bury my head in the sand. I can't believe that I used that kind of language. It's a very common kind of language.

We can just change some words, but then it also ought to make us think about, "What are the big messages that we're sending to students? What are the ways that I'm inviting the students into this class, into this experience that we're going to have?" I think it's Ken Bain who- if he didn't coin the word, he popularized the phrase "the promising syllabus". "Am I setting out an actual intellectual invitation here for you?" Because that's the way I think of my discipline.

Every time that I prepare for a course, or every time I embark on research in my discipline, it's this wonderful invitation. It's beckoning me to something, and I will learn something about myself along the way. I started thinking about creating paragraphs that really invited the student into the course. One of those was that invitation, literally, where I say, "My invitation to you," but then a condensed form of my teaching philosophy as well. I know many instructors do this.

This is just a practice that I think should become more widespread is for your job searches and for your tenure promotion materials, you probably have some version of a teaching philosophy statement. How can you communicate that to students in one really tight paragraph that really brings you across? You've got some word-level treatments, but then you've also got these bigger things that you can start doing to communicate to students what you think about the course and material.

[00:29:53] Bonni: Before Christopher and I share our recommendations for today's episode, I'd like to take a moment to thank today's sponsor. It does have to do with text, although instead of analysis of text, it is the expansion of text and that is TextExpander. TextExpander is a key part of my daily life on a computer. What TextExpander lets me do is type in a couple of easy-to-setup and easy to remember, because I made them, what are called snippets, little short things that I type. If I type L-I-N-K as in link, T-I-H-E, you guessed it, the Teaching in Higher Ed website automatically shows up in whatever it is that I am typing.

I get a little email that tells me just how much time TextExpander is saving me, and do still tend to get blown away with all of the time saved so that I can invest that extra time that I then have, to pouring it into more of the actual important aspects of whatever narrative I may be writing. TextExpander is great for repetitive typing, little mistakes that you make all the time that you want to build your own little autocorrect that actually works better than the autocorrect because you made it, being able to search for answers to things like, "What is my work phone number," because I never give it out and all that good stuff.

It's really easy to use. I mentioned that those snippets are easy to remember, but if I ever forget, it's just living right there for me to go to type in whatever it is I'm searching for in my little collection of my dictionary, if you will, of these snippets to be able to use one that maybe I forgot what that shortcut was and easily be able to incorporate it in, no matter where I am writing on my computer, Mac or Windows, on a smartphone device, such as an iPad or even an iPhone.

All of that is available with TextExpander. If you head on over to TextExpander.com/podcast, they will give you an option to get a free trial and redeem 20% off of your subscription, should you choose to, and please let them know that you heard about TextExpander from Teaching in Higher Ed. Again, that link is TextExpander.com/podcast. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring today's episode.

This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. I think so much of- I didn't plan this, Christopher, but so much of what I like about what I'm going to recommend is the next step. If we rethought our syllabus, what if we then rethought assessment? A woman named Karine Gressing, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing her name correctly, but I've got a link I'd love for you to go check out on Twitter.

It's a tweet about her final projects in a course that she taught on the Holocaust, and she writes, "I gave my students the choice between a final project and a final exam. I feel weird about testing them on genocide. 11 chose the final project, 9 chose the exam. Here's the breakdown of what my brilliant students did." I'm just going to read a few of these. She shares one student composed and scored their own musical piece to try to capture the emotion of arriving at Auschwitz. Lyrics were a Hebrew translation of Psalms 1, which victims might say the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction, and she actually links to the song, so we could go listen to that song that the student wrote.

Another student organized a campus-wide event. They worked with the student government, got funding, researched some short videos around a few important themes, wrote discussion questions, and put together a moving night of remembrance in our art center for their project. One of my students made a lecture with a voiceover to connect some of the information from the course with the current events in Ukraine. You can see the final project here. All of us prepping Zoom lectures for two years could appreciate the work that must have been put in here. This threat keeps going and going and going. What a beautiful way of allowing people to express their learning in very authentic ways.

[00:34:28] Christopher: That's beautiful. It's so profound too, even though it's so simple, that observation that it feels weird to write multiple choice questions about genocide. It's a challenge to us as instructors to remember that not all knowledge can be assessed in the same way and not all knowledge ought to be expressed in the same way. There's not neutrality about assessment. It's very value-laden. The multiple choice questions give us this sense of ownership and control over the material that creating a work of art usually doesn't, I think.

[00:35:09] Bonni: Absolutely. Christopher, what do you have to recommend for us today?

[00:35:13] Christopher: Well, I am a historian by training, so I've been trying to do some more reading in the historical perspectives of the things that I do now as a faculty developer. I came across this book, the 2020 book by Jonathan Zimmerman, The Amateur Hour. It is a history of college teaching. This is an area of scholarship that is starting to- I think beginning to blossom. We have so much to learn about what we do. We are not the first people to wonder why college teachers aren't trained to teach, why they don't seem to have the time, and in many cases, the inclination to develop as teachers.

The book does not offer many answers. If you're the type of person who wants to read books for answers about how to fix the problem, it's not really the book for you. I do have some qualms with the way Zimmerman ends on really just suggesting that great teaching is a bit ineffable. I'm not really in that camp, but it's really, really enlightening to read throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the various complaints about college teaching and the quality of college teaching and attempts to assess it which mostly were not successful, probably only in the last 30 or 40 years really been successful. If you're historically minded or really just want a broader perspective on what it means to encourage and work towards better teaching in college, I would highly recommend it.

[00:36:58] Bonni: I've never heard of it before. It sounds fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Did you want to share, Christopher, about your podcast? Because I know that might be of interest to listeners to check out after they listen to this episode. [chuckles]

[00:37:11] Christopher: Oh, well, that's very generous of you. For almost two years now, we've done a podcast that is- Professors Talk Pedagogy is the name of it. I interview faculty at my own institution at Baylor University. What has been so inspiring and frankly, a little unexpected, is I still have a really long list of people I want to interview. I thought when I started it, "Oh my gosh, am I going to run out of people that are willing to do this or that have something different to say," but that couldn't be farther from the case.

We are a private university and we are faith-based. There's some of that that may not apply to all listeners, but we really just talk about effective pedagogy from a lot of different angles.

[00:38:03] Bonni: I can't remember what milestone- oh, no, I know what it was. I was sharing about the 400th episode and a relative of mine said something like, "How on earth could you possibly have come up with 400 topics?" They thought that that was the challenge. I'm thinking, "Oh, gosh, Christopher, if you've done this for any length of time, you literally- the challenge is not, how could you come up with 400, it's how could you pick from the myriad of fascinating conversations that we have?"

Just off of today, Christopher, I want to talk to you again. I want to hear about your research [laughs] when you start doing more of the work around authority. I'm completely enthralled, and this is just one conversation, and I literally have branched off to about 50 other ones, just from today. Well, what an absolute joy it has been to get to know you and your work and the work of your co-authors and Joshua, the librarian. I have all these things I want to do with the information I now have because of you reaching out. Thank you so much for coming on the episode, and I hope this is the beginning of an ongoing relationship.

[00:39:03] Christopher: I really enjoyed talking to you, Bonni. Thanks for the invitation.

[00:39:09] Bonni: Another word of thanks to Christopher Richmann for being a guest on today's episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Today's episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak, and was edited by the ever-talented Andrew Kroger, production support was provided by Sierra Smith. These podcast episodes are just one of the Teaching in Higher Ed resources.

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The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning. Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.

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The Self and Syllabus, with Christopher Richmann - Teaching in Higher Ed

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Christopher Richmann talks about the self and syllabus project on episode 418 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

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"Syllabus Review Guide for Equity Minded Practice" (2017)

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"Syllabus Review Guide for Equity Minded Practice" (2017)