Course Syllabus Requirements and Template 2020-2021

Course Syllabus Requirements and Template 2020-2021

The course syllabus communicates to students and to faculty the course description, faculty contact information, major course goals that are based upon measurable student learning outcomes, required course materials, grading policies that include assessment methods and grading scale, attendance policies, course schedule, and an overview of college policies and services.

The primary purpose of a syllabus is to inform students in a formal and timely manner of the nature and content of the course and the policies and procedures that apply.

The course syllabus reflects the professor’s professionalism and the quality of the course. Thus it should be prepared carefully and be clear and concise. The syllabus also describes the student learning outcomes, provides an overview of the course content, and the assessments used to evaluate the students’ outcomes. At the end of each course, each instructor should be able to explain the following:

  1. Knowledge and skills that students obtained in the course.
  2. Activities students engaged in to develop knowledge and skills.
  3. Methods of assessments used to measure the level at which students developed knowledge and skills.
  4. How the results of assessment were used to improve the educational process.

For more information on writing course or program objectives in terms of student learning outcomes and assessing the outcomes, please go to Course Syllabus Guidelines and Student Learning Outcomes page.

A course syllabus should be provided to each student at the beginning of the course. This syllabus becomes the contract between the instructor and student for student learning outcomes, assignments, methods of assessment, and attendance policies.

In addition, every semester a copy of each course syllabi must be approved by department chair and uploaded onto  CX Manager prior to the first day of the semester.

Required Information

Certain information must be included in every syllabus, whether for a classroom, online, or hybrid course. The professor may add information to meet specific course needs, but the information indicated in the template on the next page must be included.

Course Syllabus Template

Please read the explanation of each part of the Course Syllabus Template below. Each required section of the template is followed by examples in text boxes:

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The Course Description section of the syllabus includes the following:

    • Course Title: American Literature I
    • Semester & Year: Fall 2020
    • Course Prefix: ENG
    • Section Number: 231
    • Section Type: H01
    • Credit Hours: (Contact Hours – Lab Hours – Hybrid Online Hours)
    • Prerequisites:  ENG 112 & ENG 114
    • Co-requisites: None
    • Course Description: (copied from the 2020-2021  SCC Student Catalog)

ENG 112-N12

Writing and Research in the Disciplines

Department of English and Humanities

Fall 2020

Course Description 

ENG-112 Writing/Research in the Disciplines: 3 contact hours All content is delivered online – 0 lab hours, 0 hybrid hours
Prerequisites ENG-111
Corequisites: None

This course, the second in a series of two, introduces research techniques, documentation styles, and writing strategies. Emphasis is placed on analyzing information and ideas and incorporating research findings into documented writing and research projects. Upon completion, students should be able to evaluate and synthesize information from primary and secondary sources using documentation appropriate to various disciplines. This course has been approved for transfer under the Comprehensive Articulation Agreement as a general education course in English Composition. This course is a Universal General Education Transfer Component (UGETC) course for the A.A., A.E., and A.S. degrees.

FACULTY INFORMATION

The Faculty Information section includes the following:

  • Faculty Member’s Name: (may be preceded with the instructor’s preferred title such as Professor Smith, Dr. Smith, or Ms. Smith)
  • Office Location: (building and office number)
  • Office Hours: (On campus): Your days and time (Virtual office hours): Your availability for real time chat – Skype, MS Communicator, Phone, etc.
  • Telephone Number: (office number or other contact number) we do not recommend giving students your personal cell or home phone number. Please consider the following resources to create a separate number: Google Voice  or Remind 
  • Email Address: (include your college email address and a 24hrs to 48hrs response time statement) Please do not provide students will an email address that is not associated with the college.  All communication via email to students must be conducted using your sandhills email account or via Moodle as these sites are password protected
Faculty Information

Instructor: Susan Grine

Office Location: 220 Logan Hall

Collaborate Office Hours: Mondays and Thursdays from 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM and by appointment

Telephone: (910) 695-3876

Email: grines@sandhills.edu  (24 to 48 hours response time)

MAJOR COURSE GOALS

All courses should be based upon measurable student learning outcomes. Therefore, the Major Course Goals section lists the learning outcomes that each successful student will have achieved at the end of the course. These goals should be 4-10 broad goals.  Each goal must be written in measurable terms to describe what the student could do when he or she completed the course successfully. General terms such as learned, appreciated, or understood cannot be measured effectively, so they should be replaced by terms that can be measured, such as analyzed, compared, defined, described, and explained. Each bulleted item begins with a capital letter and ends with a period. Note: At the end of each course, each instructor should be able to explain the following:

  1. Knowledge and skills that students obtained in the course.
  2. Activities students engaged in to develop knowledge and skills.
  3. Methods of assessments used to measure the level at which students developed knowledge and skills.
  4. How the results of assessment were used to improve the educational process.

For more information on writing course or program objectives in terms of student learning outcomes and assessing the outcomes, please go to Course Syllabus Guidelines and Student Learning Outcomes.

Major Course Goals

Using the composition skills that were acquired in English 111, students in this course will be expected to compose written and oral research reports that are argumentative or persuasive in form. The professor will determine the number of graded assignments. Upon successful completion of the course, students will have demonstrated these basic skills of academic research, argumentation, and oral communication.

Student Learning Outcomes

  • Read, locate and evaluate a variety of information using research methodologies appropriate to disciplines.
  • Apply research and use writing to achieve a variety of purposes in a variety of disciplinary contexts.
  • Demonstrate accurate and responsible documentation appropriate to disciplines.
  • Present, individually or collaboratively, work appropriate to rhetorical situation.

More specific objectives for each module of study will be available on our Moodle course site.

GENERAL EDUCATION

Sandhills Community College requires successful completion of a minimum of 15 credit hours of general education courses for undergraduate degree programs.  Faculty at Sandhills have identified three primary general education goals: reading comprehension, communication, and critical thinking.

For each of these three goals, competencies have been developed to assess student attainment through course-embedded student assessments in the following areas: humanities/fine arts, natural sciences/mathematics, and social/behavioral sciences.  This course is part of the assessment and support of the core general education goals.

The statement below should be included in courses taught in the following areas: humanities/fine arts, natural sciences/mathematics, and social/behavioral sciences. In addition, in your course syllabus, faculty should list the general education goal and outcome where students will show improvement because of completing the course successfully.

General Education

Sandhills Community College requires successful completion of a minimum of 15 credit hours of general education courses for undergraduate degree programs.  Faculty at Sandhills have identified three primary general education goals: reading comprehension, communication, and critical thinking.

For each of these three goals, competencies have been developed to assess student attainment through course-embedded student assessments in the following areas: humanities/fine arts, natural sciences/mathematics, and social/behavioral sciences.  This course is part of the assessment and support of the core general education goals.

 

REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALS

In this section, you will list all required and recommended course materials beginning with your textbook if one is required for your course. Please list all required or recommended books by author, title, edition, publisher, date, and ISBN. Be sure to list any additional required or recommended materials such as software.

Required Course Materials 

  1. Bullock, Richard, et al. The Little Seagull Handbook. W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.
  2. Graff, Gerald, et al. They Say, I Say: With Readings, Across Disciplines. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018. ISBN for E-Book 978-0-393-67132-2

GRADING POLICIES

This section advises students of the assessment methods and grading scale used in the course. The example below describes the types of assignments and their weight, followed by the grading scale for individual assignments.

For online and hybrid courses the following is required:

  • Gradebook is available to students (course total may be hidden if desired).
  • Gradebook calculations match what is in the syllabus.
Grading Policies

Grading Scale for Individual Assignments, Categories, and Final Grade:

A = 93-100    B = 85-92    C = 77-84    D = 70-76   F = Below 70

Areas of Assessment

Your final course grade will be based upon the following weights for categories of assessments:

Discussion Forums                        20%

Quizzes                                                10%

Rhetorical Analysis                        10%

Annotated Bibliography              10%

Research Paper                               20%

Presentation                                     10%

APA Revision                                    10%

Final Exam                                         10%

Late Work and Extra Credit

Late work will not be accepted in this course; however, an extra credit assignment will be included with most modules to replace the lowest forum grade.  Please note that extra credit cannot replace essay, quiz, paper, or presentation grades.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

Academic Integrity

SCC believes that the pursuit of knowledge requires honesty.  Academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to the following:

  • Copying the work of another.
  • Collaboration: Working with another person on a test, examination, or paper without expressed authorization and without indicating that collaboration has occurred.
  • Plagiarism: The representation of the work of another person as one’s own; the failure to cite the source of an idea, information, or words that come from someone other than the author of the paper or the exam.
  • Use of books, notes and/or electronic devices in examinations without the explicit permission of the professor.

Penalties for academic dishonesty may include the following:

  • Zero grade on the test or assignment on which cheating occurs.

Failing grade of an F or FW for the course depending on the point in the semester as well as immediate dismissal from the course.

ATTENDANCE POLICIES

The Attendance Policies section states the instructor’s attendance policies for the course. The example below states the SCC Attendance Policy copied from the General Catalog 2020-2021. You may include all of that information in your course syllabus, but you should modify the second two sentences if you permit a certain number of absences, calculate tardies as an absence, or restrict absences for certain reasons. You may also include this statement for online or hybrid courses: “The state auditor requires that the instructor be able to demonstrate that students are participating in the course on a regular basis.”

Attendance Policy:

The state auditor requires that the instructor be able to demonstrate that students are participating in the course on a regular basis. All assignments should be completed by the assigned due dates, including reading assignments, discussion forum assignments, quizzes, writing assignments, and exams.  Although you are not required to log in to the course at a specific hour and time, you must be active in the course site on a weekly basis.  You should not wait until the last day an assignment is due to log in to the course that week.  Announcements will be posted on the home page of the course on a weekly basis with advice about completing assignments.

Since this is an online course, failing to complete an assignment will be considered an absence. Missing three consecutive assignments will result in being dropped from the course.

Additional college policies with regard to absence are explained below: 

Adding and Dropping Courses:

A student may add a course with permission of the advisor through the second day of the semester. After that point, permission of the advisor and the instructor is needed in order to add a course through the 10% census date. The last date of attendance is required for all course drop requests. A student may drop (DR) a course at any time during the first 65% point of the semester or summer session by completing a Course Change Form, obtaining the signatures of the advisor and the instructor, and filing the form with the Office of Records and Registration. A student may withdraw (WP or FW – the instructor of record makes the determination of WP or FW) from a course at any time after the 65% point of the semester by completing the Course Change Form, obtaining the signatures of the advisor and instructor, and filing the form with Office of Records and Registration.

Withdrawal from a Course, Program, or the College:

Emergency situations may arise after the no-penalty drop period whereby students must leave involuntarily. In this case, the student may withdraw from the course by completing a Course Change Form. Students must obtain signatures from the business office, library, and financial aid office.  This form must be completed and filed with the Office of Records and Registration and shared with the Financial Aid Office. Students who are passing at the time of the withdrawal may receive a grade of WP.  Students who are failing at the time of withdrawal may receive a grade of FW. Students who stop attending class without officially withdrawing from the course may receive a failing grade in the course.

Instructor-Initiated Drop or Withdrawal
An instructor will drop a student if the student has failed to attend two consecutive weeks’ worth of class. Additionally, an instructor may drop or withdraw a student from a course under any of the following conditions:

  • Student fails to meet the attendance policy of the course, if that policy is more restrictive than what is stated above.
  • Student fails to upload, post, or otherwise participate in an online class within the time period prescribed in the online syllabus, if that policy is more restrictive than what is stated above.
  • Student is absent from the final exam without the instructor’s permission.
  • Student exhibits misconduct.

COURSE SCHEDULE

This section in the Course Syllabus contains an overview of the tentative schedule of the course arranged by weeks or by days. Whether providing a weekly or a daily schedule, instructors should list due dates of major assignments, including written and oral reports, tests, examinations, and official holidays.

Course Schedule:

Hello students! Here is our tentative schedule for the course. For more specific details, consult the Modules area of the course.

  • Module 1: Colonial Literature I, Weeks 1-2. Your first test will be given at the end of the 2nd week.
  • Module 2: Colonial Literature II, Weeks 3-4. Your second test will be given at the end of the 4th week.
  • Module 3: Reason and Revolution I, Weeks 5-6. Your first essay assignment will be due at the end of the second week.
  • Module 4: Reason and Revolution II, Weeks 7-8. Your mid-term exam will be due at the end of the 8th week.
  • Module 5: Romanticism I, Weeks 9-10
  • Module 6: Romanticism II, Weeks 11-13. Your third test will be due at the end of the 13th week.
  • Module 7: Civil War Literature, Weeks 14-15. Your second essay will be due at the end of the 15th week.
  • Review and Final Exam: Week 16. The final exam day and time will be announced during the semester.

SCC Student Governance Statements

This final section in the Course Syllabus contains a summary for students of SCC resources and policies that are required in every syllabus. Note: To make sure that students receive the latest information, you can download a copy of the latest version from the Web and attach that to your syllabus, or you can give the students a link to the URL: https://www.sandhills.edu/faculty-staff/syllabus/studentGovernance.php

SANDHILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENT GOVERNANCE STATEMENTS

Use the link below to read a summary for students of various policies and services listed in the Sandhills Community College General Catalog:

 

Example of Standard Syllabus Format

Please see an example of a standard syllabi, created by the Department Chair of English and Humanities, Ms. Susan Grine: Example of Standard Syllabi Format

In addition, this document includes syllabus requirements and suggestions/examples of Equity-Mindedness when developing a syllabus.