A course syllabus is one of the most important documents and serves as a kind of map or directionality for both you and your students. However, talking about your course syllabus the first day can often be dry and disengaging, and your students, who may not have read the syllabus or have stopped paying attention, inevitably ask you questions that make you think, “That’s in the syllabus!” Just as no amount of telling your students to read the readings guarantees learning, no amount of reading the syllabus to your students guarantees retention of key syllabus information.
Flip your syllabus overview session into a targeted learning task, and your students will be able to independently implement the key information found within. You will also save valuable time in the live session by checking in on key information rather than reading a potentially very long syllabus aloud. As an added bonus, you can reuse these activities term after term, making your workload even lighter.
Start by pulling the top 10 (or so) must-know points from your syllabus.
- What will they likely need more clarification on?
- What do they need to know about access to readings, resources, support, etc.?
- What is important for them to know right away about the course assessment and how they are evaluated?
- What else is important for them to succeed in this course?
Then choose any of these 3 strategies:
Pop Quiz, But Gamified
Turn those key points into multiple choice or true/false items, and add them into a free and fun quizzing tool like Kahoot! or even Zoom’s polling options. Have students compete to rack up points for bragging rights. Who wouldn’t want to be the most prepared student?
Syllabus Scavenger Hunt
For questions that have longer answers or take more time, use a collaborative cloud survey such as Google Forms. Put your students into dyads or triads, and have them complete the questionnaire using the syllabus. This ensures that students are looking over the syllabus, especially at crucial sections. The added bonus here is that students get to connect in small groups, work collaboratively to close knowledge gaps, and have space to get to know one another. You get to see their responses live for immediate whole group feedback.
Whiteboard & Annotation Questions
This activity provides even more of an opportunity for your students to lead their learning. Share a whiteboard, make annotations anonymous so no student feels uncomfortable being honest, and have students write a question they have about the syllabus. Students can stamp next to any questions that they also have. You can further push students to answer each others’ questions if they know the answer.
Be sure to provide correct answers, clarification, demonstration, and resources as needed during the review discussion so by the end of the activity, your students have more clarity and you have real information on what they know about the syllabus.
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