Welcome to the Sheridan Center's Electronic Syllabus Workshop

The Syllabus Workshop is designed to explore how a syllabus conveys the educational goals of a course to students. Course structure shapes educational outcomes and that an effective syllabus maximizes student learning. It is hard to imagine how one's course syllabus is read by the non-expert student. A clear well-constructed syllabus helps students to learn to make informed choices about course selection as an integral part of the Brown "Open Curriculum". First, visitors are invited to study syllabi from academic areas other than their own in order to reflect upon how effectively they convey essential information about the course goals and objectives. Visitors may then adapt the Center's Master Syllabus Form to their own pedagogical needs.

The four different syllabi, one from each of the major academic divisions, are accompanied by a series of questions analyzing the pedagogical effectiveness of the information conveyed. The Workshop is linked to the electronic version of the Sheridan Center Teaching Handbook Constructing a Syllabus, and to the Brown Computing and Information Services Course Publisher web site program.

Please begin by choosing a syllabus from an academic area other than your own and consider how effectively the proposed learning experience in the course is conveyed to you:

Humanities | Social Sciences | Physical Sciences | Life Sciences

After viewing syllabi from other academic areas, you are ready to adapt the Center's "Master Syllabus Form" for your own pedagogical needs.

Both the Teaching Handbook Constructing a Syllabus and the Syllabus Workshop were written by Michael J. V. Woolcock, Ph.D.