Negotiating Your Syllabus

Kaplan, David M.; Renard, Monika

doi:10.1177/1052562914564788

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Finally, with syllabi providing information to students, it is important that instructors stay consistent with what they have provided on the syllabus. If instructors give exceptions to students that are in contrast to what is written on the syllabus, then this is rewarding students who may know that the syllabus can be negotiable and may disadvantage students who view it to be absolute and not changing (71,72). Making the rules explicit on the syllabus is only useful to students if the "rules of the game" are the same for all students.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s in the syllabus … or is it? How biology syllabi can serve as communication tools for creating inclusive classrooms at a large-enrollment research institution

Gin

Scott

Pfeiffer

et al. 2021

Advances in Physiology Education

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Syllabi are usually required by institutions of higher education and often are the first exposure that students have to a particular course. Instructors can use syllabi as a mechanism to convey important information to students. Moreover, a syllabus can be considered a tool to create inclusive biology courses by transmitting information to all students equitably. In this study, we examined 75 biology course syllabi collected from a research-intensive institution to examine what content instructors include. We reviewed the syllabi to determine the presence or absence of elements and assessed to what extent there were differences in the presence or absence of certain syllabus elements based on course level and course size. We found that instructors are most likely to include content about course expectations and least likely to include content about creating positive classroom climate on their course syllabi. Despite university requirements, many instructors did not include the university-mandated criteria and they did not include elements that could increase how inclusive students perceive the course to be. However, instructors more often included inclusive content when it was required by the university. We also found that students enrolled in upper level courses and small enrollment courses are provided with less content on their syllabi, which we would then interpret as a less inclusive syllabus. We discuss the implications of how these results may differentially impact students in these courses and how the syllabus can be a tool for creating more inclusive college biology courses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s in the syllabus … or is it? How biology syllabi can serve as communication tools for creating inclusive classrooms at a large-enrollment research institution

Gin

Scott

Pfeiffer

et al. 2021

Advances in Physiology Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Learning charters provide productive models for alternative grading. Closely tied to the principles of contract grading and grading contracts, learning charters in general offer students and instructors opportunities to create course-wide and individual goals, set learning objectives, and develop measures for assessing their progress toward those goals (Boud 1989;Brubaker 2010;Danielewicz and Elbow 2009;Kaplan and Renard 2015). Within the world of our course, learning charters served as a space for students to engage in goal setting and evaluation, reflection, and dialogue with the instructors.…”

Section: Course Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Letting Go of Grades: Creating an Environment of Autonomy and a Focus on Learning for High Achieving Students

Hall

Meinking²

2022

TLI

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In this essay we discuss an iterative, reflective writing assignment (the “learning charter”) as a way to understand how high-achieving students experienced an ungrading learning environment. Working with evidence from student written reflection and in-class conversations, we chronicle how students articulated their perspectives on this approach through the fifteen-week semester. Our findings indicate that despite initial uncertainty, students found the environment to be one that promoted learning for the sake of learning, cultivated mental wellness, and compelled them to pursue meaningful questions about their own educational goals and experience. While this development was not without feelings of conflict and struggle throughout the course, by the end of it, students reported a renewed focus on the value of learning. We suggest that the strategies employed in this course might be successfully adopted in or adapted to other courses for high-achieving students, as well as other student populations.

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“…Despite discouraging the “contract” description, these legal perspectives have nevertheless encouraged the design of collaborative documents in which faculty and students work to outline expectations and responsibilities. And in fact, collaborative syllabus design in which faculty and students can negotiate on the terms has become an important part of recent attempts to make academia more inclusive and to help invite student investment in the learning process (Hudd, 2003; Hess, 2008; Shaw, 2009; Stocker and Reddad, 2013; Fornaciari and Lund Dean, 2014; Kaplan and Renard, 2015).…”

Section: Background For Research Agreementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Research Agreements to Build Respectful, Publication-Grade Scholarly Relationships in Liberal-Arts Settings

2019

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Negotiating Your Syllabus

Cited by 15 publications

References 19 publications

It’s in the syllabus … or is it? How biology syllabi can serve as communication tools for creating inclusive classrooms at a large-enrollment research institution

It’s in the syllabus … or is it? How biology syllabi can serve as communication tools for creating inclusive classrooms at a large-enrollment research institution

Letting Go of Grades: Creating an Environment of Autonomy and a Focus on Learning for High Achieving Students

Using Research Agreements to Build Respectful, Publication-Grade Scholarly Relationships in Liberal-Arts Settings

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