Sample Syllabi: Some Observations
January 21, 2020
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More than 20 of you responded to our call for sample syllabi by sending yours. Thank you! It may not be a stratified random sample, but your collection represents many different disciplines and courses as well as differences in content, format, style, and tone. I’ve also been perusing syllabi collections on various discipline-based teaching sites. Again, there was nothing systematic about this look at those syllabi, which means my observations, questions, and suggestions are based on an eyeball analysis.
That sample syllabus is amazing! Thank you to Chris for sharing with us!!
The sample syllabus is very “pretty” but is it an accessible document?
Great question. I meant to add a note about this issue because Chris did spend a lot of time making the PDF supplied as accessible as possible for our readers. Still, he noted that it is “monstrously difficult” to make a bilingual document screen reader accessible—not least when, as in this instance, the text runs both left-to-right and right-to-left. Thus, he allowed that should a student need it, either an audio-only (chapterized MP3) or Braille version of the syllabus would be supplied. The multiple-language issue leads me to wonder about how foreign language instructors can most easily go about making their course materials accessible.