The Course Syllabus: A Learning-Centered Approach

By Judith Grunert O'Brien, Barbara J. Millis, Margaret W. Cohen and Robert M. Diamond

When it was first published in 1997, The Course Syllabus became the gold standard reference for both new and experienced college faculty. Like the first edition, this book is based on a learner-centered approach. Because faculty members are now deeply committed to engaging students in learning, the syllabus has evolved into a useful, if lengthy, document. Today's syllabus provides details about course objectives, requirements and expectations, and also includes information about teaching philosophies, specific activities and the rationale for their use, and tools essential to student success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Oct 29, 2009
• ISBN: 9780470605493

Book preview

Part I

Focus on Learning

COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES across the United States are making a fresh commitment to student learning. Many would argue that learning has always been central in their institutions; however, what is happening now is different in important ways. Barkley, Cross, and Major (2005) remind faculty of the need to pay attention to what students are learning: At a time when students and parents consider a college education a necessity . . . legislators, accrediting agencies, the American public, and educators themselves are raising questions about what students are learning in college—and they are asking for evidence (p. xi). These changing expectations about the need for effective undergraduate education are reinforced by broader influences, including the increased use of technology and the short half-life of knowledge in most discipline areas. Lifelong learning—including communication, critical thinking, and team-building skills—is a virtual necessity for all members of the workforce today. Kuh (2007) points out that as many as four-fifths of high-school graduates will need some form of postsecondary education if they are to become self-sufficient and the nation is to remain economically competitive (p. B12). The nature of the workforce and the diverse student populations that feed it also call for new innovations in the classroom.

Along with the recognition of multiple perspectives comes a responsibility that colleges and universities are trying to meet through a renewed focus on students and how they learn. As an instructor, making your students’ learning and development a priority means that you must consider their varied educational needs, interests, and motivations as you determine the content and structure of your course.

Barr and Tagg’s (1995) influential article From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education fueled a healthy movement toward rethinking the nature of teaching and learning. It was followed by Tagg’s (2003) book The Learning Paradigm College. The Association of American Colleges and Universities (2002) released an important monograph, Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College, that also sparked campus symposia and discussions. Subsequent books—such as Weimer’s (2002) Learner-Centered Teaching and Fink’s (2003) Creating Significant Learning Experiences—and numerous articles provide useful models and convincing research. A number of recent publications have reinforced the need for more attention to instructional processes in part because of the influx of so-called Millennials, students born after 1982 who often enter colleges and universities without adequate academic preparation, study skills, or the predisposition to do whatever it takes to succeed.

Much has been written about the Millennial generation. McGuire and Williams (2002) characterize Millennials as having a consumer mentality, ubiquitous computer access, and an intolerance for nonengaging pedagogical techniques (p. 186). The Millennials are also characterized as being team oriented. Howe, Strauss, and Matson (2000) state, From Barney and soccer to school uniforms and a new classroom emphasis on group learning, Millennials are developing strong team instincts and tight peer bonds (p. 44). Carlson (2005), quoting R. T. Sweeney, adds, ‘In grade school they were pushed to collaboration’ which explains the popularity of group study in college today . . . ‘The collaboration . . . is both in-person and virtual’ (p. A36).

Furthermore, Millennials are focused on being credentialed with little interest in obtaining a broad-based liberal arts education. Thus, they are concerned with careers and earning a good living. Bauerlein (2006) regards Millennials as disengaged from the liberal arts curriculum and focused instead on a blooming, buzzing confusion of adolescent stimuli, such as TV shows, blogs, hand-helds, [and] wireless (p. B8). Sweeney remarks on the rigidity of the Millennials: They want to learn, but they want to learn only what they have to learn, and they want to learn it in a style that is best for them . . . Often they prefer to learn by doing (Carlson, 2005, p. A36). Strauss and Howe (2005) offer a stern warning that faculty have to change to face these realities: [I]f Millennials perceive professors as being so stuck in the last century on matters of ideology, attitude, and technology that they can no longer teach the knowledge and skills necessary for financial success—then colleges should watch out. Many will see their admissions pools shrink, their acceptance yields decline, and their dropout rates rise—perhaps sharply (p. B24).

More positively, Harris and Cullen (2007) note that the Millennials ’ penchant for doing rather than knowing leads them to favor experiential learning and trial and error over abstract knowledge, an observation supporting the shift toward a learning-centered pedagogy (p. 5).

Preparing Students

The Association of College and Research Libraries (2006) defines information-literate students as those who recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information. As the world moves toward a knowledge-based economy, information literacy becomes a crucial component of preparing students for the lifelong learning that current and future job markets demand.

You need only consider the situations students will face after graduation to appreciate the importance of a focus on learning for your course and your syllabus. Our contemporary lives have intensified our need to know how to learn, both alone and in collaboration with others. Upon leaving school, your students will encounter complex problems daily and will come to recognize that contradiction, ambiguity, and change are natural states of affairs. Faced with multiple and often conflicting perspectives, they will continually be forced to break out of old thought patterns, to think in new ways. The Association of American Colleges and Universities (2002) frames it this way: The world is complex, interconnected, and more reliant on knowledge than ever before. College has become a virtual necessity for individuals to build satisfying lives and careers. In a world of turbulent changes, every kind of occupation has seen a dramatic increase in education requirements. The majority of jobs considered desirable are now held by people with at least some college, and jobs for the best educated workers are growing the fastest (chap. 1).

Preparing your students for the purposeful and effective lifelong learning that these conditions require has strong implications for course content, structure, and the materials and strategies that you use to promote learning. Students will require more carefully thought-out information and well-honed tools.

Our students live and work in a world where the quality and quantity of information changes rapidly and what counts as knowledge alters with time and context. The effects of information technology and communications technology have produced profound changes in the way we live and work. Baron (2001) reminds us that:

Information sources have proliferated and become more complex over the past decade, and they will continue to do so for a long time to come. From a well-established, systemic, and centralized system composed mainly of books, journals, government documents, and the indices that accompany them, the world of information has expanded tremendously.

It now includes not only online versions of all of the traditional sources, but also sources never before considered, such as electronic databases and Web sites. The sheer volume of information and information sources is daunting, and so is the task of making informed and discriminating choices of value and usage.

An impressive number of new studies, books, and articles have focused on the way students learn. Bransford, Brown, and Cocking’s (2000) How People Learn made it difficult for even the most lecture-committed faculty member to ignore research with clear implications for a more learning - centered basis of teaching. Beichner’s (2006) groundbreaking summary of the research on active learning and its implications for all aspects of teaching and learning, including the design of learning environments, makes it difficult to ignore the mounting evidence that business as usual—preparing and delivering lectures to passive students who then regurgitate the facts on short-answer or multiple-choice tests—is no longer an adequate pedagogical response to the demands of the twenty -first century. In fact, Finkle (2000) concludes, Educational research over the past twenty-five years has established beyond a doubt a simple fact: What is transmitted to students through lecturing is simply not retained for any significant length of time (p. 3).

Setting a Framework for Knowledge

Learning is an active, constructive, contextual process. New knowledge is acquired in relation to previous knowledge; information becomes meaningful when it is presented and acquired in some type of framework. From a learning-centered perspective, your task as an instructor is to interact with students in ways that enable them to acquire new information, practice new skills, reconfigure what they already know, and recognize what they have learned (B. G. Davis, 1993).

A learning-centered approach has subtle but profound implications for you as a teacher. It asks that you think carefully about your teaching philosophy, what it means to be an educated person in your discipline or field, how your course relates to disciplinary and interdisciplinary programs of study, and your intentions and purposes for producing and assessing learning. It asks that you think through the implications of your preferred teaching style; the decisions you make about teaching strategies and forms of assessment; and the ways that students’ diverse needs, interests, and purposes can influence all those