Creating a Student Centered Syllabus
Educators increasingly agree that a learner-centered syllabus is associated with better rapport between students and teachers and increased student motivation, achievement, and empowerment. Accordingly, in 2009 Cullen and Harris developed a rubric for assessing the degree to which a syllabus is learner-centered versus teacher-centered.
The following document is a resource to support you in designing a Learning-Centered course syllabus. Using this resource in developing your syllabus will help you: • Learn why a syllabus is important. • Understand what students expect from a course syllabus. • Explore the major components that should be included in a syllabus. • Develop a syllabus that will enhance student learning.
The article discusses the evolution of the role of syllabus in higher education in the U.S. Topics discussed include the argument of professor Mano Singham and other critics regarding the authoritativeness of the content-focused syllabi, the origin of the learning-focused syllabi from the evidence-based teaching, and the comparison between the content and learning-focused syllabi.
The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is an effort to create the first large-scale online database of university course syllabi as a platform for the development of new research, teaching, and administrative tools. The project is based at The American Assembly at Columbia University.