Topic 1.1: Why the Syllabus Matters
Why the Syllabus Matters
The syllabus is important to ensure that all students understand the course learning outcomes, policies, communication guidelines, and participation requirements. This is particularly important for a self-paced course where there is significant collaboration among the students. We all need to have common expectations about how we support each other's learning.
The syllabus is also your first reading assignment in this course; think of the syllabus as a text that needs to be carefully and thoroughly examined.
In this course, you will be asked to be active readers. An active reader reviews a text consciously (paying close attention to the text's purpose, audience, techniques) and critically (responding to the text with questions, evaluations, commentary). As you read a text—newspaper, short story, novel, business report, email, textbook, and yes, syllabus—you discern a purpose to the text. It may be to inform, to entertain, to analyze, to summarize. For all reading assignments in this course, you should determine the purpose of each text. Sometimes an initial purpose will be outlined for you before you read, but there will be times when you discover, as an active reader, there is more than one purpose to the text.
For example, consider the syllabus of this course. Its primary purpose is to inform students of learning outcomes and process, yet there's more to discover. When you set aside an appropriate amount of time to read the syllabus critically, you may find that you have questions about certain processes, or you may wish to ask for clarification on interaction expectations. Use the forum called Questions About the Course for general inquiries about the course. The course designer will monitor this discussion forum and respond to comments, questions, and requests within 48 hours.
Being a conscious, critical, and active reader is essential to quality participation, and it is your quality participation that shapes the writing community that develops in this course. To assure a certain level of quality, you will take a reading quiz in each course module, starting with the Module 1 Quiz. So read your syllabus and Module 1 content consciously and critically, making sure you are ready to take a quiz on how well you have read your texts.
Assignments
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