Designing a Motivational Syllabus: Creating a Learning Path for Student Engagement

A thoughtfully constructed syllabus can be transformative for your students’ learning, communicating the path they can take to succeed.

This book demonstrates how, rather than being a mundane document to convey policies, you can construct your syllabus to be a motivating resource that conveys a clear sense of your course’s learning goals, how students can achieve those goals, and makes evident your teaching philosophy and why you have adopted the teaching strategies you will use, such as discussion or group activities.

Developing or revising a syllabus also presents you with a perfect opportunity to review the learning possibilities for the semester. Well-designed, it can help you stay focused on achieving the learning outcomes, as well as determine if the class is on track and whether adjustments to the schedule are needed.

The authors show how, by adopting a welcoming tone and clearly stating learning outcomes, your syllabus can engage students by explaining the relevance of your course to their studies, create an all-important positive first impression of you as an instructor, and guide students through the resources you will be using, the assignments ahead, as well as clear guidance on how they will be assessed. Referred to frequently as the course progresses, an effective syllabus will keep students engaged and on task.

Christine Harrington and Melissa Thomas lead you through all the elements of a syllabus to help you identify how to present key messages and information about your course, think through the impressions you want to create, and, equally importantly, suggest how you can use layout and elements such as images and charts to make your syllabus visually appealing and easy to navigate.

Dr.Christine Harrington is an Associate Professor in the Department of EducationalLeadership at New Jersey City University. She co-coordinates a newlyestablished Ed.D. in Community College Leadership program. Prior to thisposition, she worked at Middlesex County College for 18 years asa Professor of Psychology and Student Success, the Director of theCenter for the Enrichment of Learning and Teaching, Coordinator of StudentSuccess and a Counselor. She also served a 2-year term as theExecutive Director of the Center for Student Success at the NJ Council ofCounty Colleges. Dr. Harrington is frequently invited to presentat conferences and at colleges and universities.

Melissa Thomas is a Lecturer for the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin for the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan (TIP) Scholars program, a wraparound program that transforms the learning experience for UT students by creating a small academic community that promotes academic excellence and intellectual investment.

Kathleen F. Gabriel is currently an associate professor at California State University (CSU), Chico, and an educational consultant. She began her extensive teaching career as a high school social science teacher before she became a resource specialist teacher for students with learning disabilities. When moving to the university setting, she first developed an academic support program for at-risk and unprepared college students. She also became a faculty development specialist at the University of Arizona. She then served as the director of disabled student services at a community college in Northern California before joining the School of Education at CSU, Chico, where she has received two teaching awards.