Syllabus Policies

Yes, it's available at amazon.com.  And, yes, you want one.

My experience with syllabi changed in grad school.  I think it had something to do with taking full financial responsibility for my education.  I also had a clearer vision of my intended career.  While a B.A. in Broadcasting & Cinema might simply have extended my adolescence, I enrolled in UNCG’s M.F.A. program aiming very specifically for a career demanding time both behind a camera and in front of students.  Thus I stockpiled syllabi from the grad courses I took (and those undergrad courses in which I served as teaching assistant) thinking them templates for the future.  

All too suddenly, graduation moved me from one side of the desk to its obverse.  After a summer of freelance filmmaking, I was an author of syllabi.  But I was an amateur.  I am still an amateur.  Most professors are.  With scant exception (students of Education seem an obvious special case), we are taught about our discipline, but not about the craft of teaching.  It is the dirty secret of our profession. 

Thus what follows must be solely my own experience.  Largely the result of trial and error.  Ideas appropriated from seasoned colleagues over lunch.  I will not defend it as “best practices in pedagogy.”  I am not repackaging philosophy; I am recounting personal practice, the thinking behind my own syllabus architecture.  See it in action HERE if it helps

A syllabus seems cloven.  It is not a single document, but two.  One section is the calendar.  I’ll talk more about this ever-changing schedule in a later essay.  For now, let’s consider the less volatile portion: policies and information.

I try to begin by asking myself “in which class policies do undergraduates take the most interest?”  After a couple of decades of listening, the answers are, I believe, grading and late work.  To the extent that institutional templates allow, I try to move these topics toward the top. 

Over the years, I have sensed students (and their helicopter parents) herding me toward objective, quantifiable assessment.  They want checklists.  They want rubrics which pin me down and take the squishy wiggle room out of grading.  Never mind that few such matrices await them in the working world.  Never mind that the assessment of art will always include a measure of subjectivity.  This expectation is most likely to impact policies governing Class Participation and Grade Appeals.  I therefore recommend specificity and clarity in these sections.

The other “first-day” questions that Digital Filmmaking students have are often logistic.  They want to know how they can get their hands on the equipment.  If they can use their own cameras.  How late they can remain in editing bays.  Where the professor hangs out.

In my mind, “hanging out” is a consideration beyond mere office hours.  It is, sadly, the secret weapon too often denied adjuncts.  But it is an essential contact point for those students expected to “make things.”  E-mail me all you want, but I can offer little suggestion for improving your project’s mic or lighting placement unless we share physical space.

Lower on the list are the things I feel obliged to tell them.  The truth is, such inclusions are meant to indemnify educators and their employers.  They later give us the high ground from which to accuse, to justify, and to punish.   You should (or will be required to) address:

• disability access
• academic honesty
• smart phone and laptop etiquette
• copyright and project ownership.  A fair number of schools simply retain all rights to student work.  I recommend a statement that at least accounts for your school’s promotional use of class projects.  This section, like the rest of the syllabus, should be considered a legal contract.  As such, it must offer an opt-out.  The tangles of this issue merit a book of their own.  Do not take a personal stand.  Rather, make sure the statement is a departmental one authored in concert with your institution’s legal authorities.

Finally, there are philosophies you want to espouse.  Maybe they explain the course objectives, or the ideologies which drive your brand of pedagogy.  These are usually inoffensive and are often required at faith-based institutions.  Maybe they are excerpts or drafts of documents you will present for tenure and promotion review.  But they are irrelevant to your students.  Alums may read them and wistfully smile, but accept the reality that your students do not give two figs for your Statement of Teaching Philosophy.

I’m going to sign off with a strongly-worded caveat:  Do not — do not — author a policy you are unwilling to enforce.  If you promise to crucify cheaters, you had best keep railroad spikes handy in an office drawer.  This yardstick of relevance needn’t make your policies a foxhole to die in.  But it might help you avoid battles you don’t truly consider important.

Previously:  Syllabus Memories
Next:  Media Studies Calendars