Estimated reading time: 5 minutes, 33 seconds

Hi Maha, thanks for this post highlighting some interesting and inspiring ideas on approaching syllabus writing. It’s an interesting thing to contemplate – and one of those things that I guess teachers tend to produce in the same standard format without putting much thought into it (much like the ‘housekeeping’ section in classroom training that happens in organisational contexts).
And thinking about Terry’s point (.. is it “just moving around forks on the dining tables in the Hindenberg…”?) changing the way a syllabus is presented and pitched is only smoke and mirrors if the rest of the course isn’t equally inspiring or you don’t follow through with the promises…or if the system insists on forcing constraints on you and still having you calibrate student grades into a bell curve. But: I think as practitioners you’ve still got to start somewhere – and that first step is changing your mindset and your students’ mindset, so that you’re both striving for something more than just ticking the boxes. And the syllabus is that initial step – how you pitch what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it, it’s the students’ first impression and that still counts for something, surely?

I still need to read Adam’s post too (…but I sense a september edcontexts f5f theme on syllabi…! will add it to the sept gdoc as a reference).