Ideas for Teaching Your Syllabus

Faculty  Teaching Resources

  Creating the syllabus is only part of the process. Teaching it and/or getting the class to know it is the other important aspect. The following are some ideas for how to teach the syllabus. Hopefully these ideas inspire you to come up with your own creative way of teaching your syllabus.

• Drawing Exercise: Get the class into groups of 4-5 and assign each group a portion of your syllabus. Give each group butcher paper and pens and have them visually represent that part of the syllabus onto the paper. Then have groups present their portions of the syllabus. After each group presents, the instructor can add additional points or underscore important aspects of that part of the syllabus. This activity also acts as an ice breaker.
  

•  Syllabus BINGO: Design a Bingo card with different questions they can find answers to in the syllabus. Get them into groups and have them study the syllabus to find the answers. (The motivation to win is even higher if you bring candy or some other small reward for the winning team.) This also can work as a good ice breaker, although students will often work alone on this because they want to complete the task on their own rather than in a group -- there is less discussion than in the drawing exercise.
  

• Syllabus Scavenger Hunt: This works in a similar manner to the Bingo game, but instead of questions in a Bingo card, it is a more linear list of questions they need to find answers to in the syllabus.
  

• Quiz: Assign a quiz that asks the students things about the syllabus content. Following the quiz, go over the answers as a class. This will act as a way to correct the quiz and review the syllabus.