The 21st-Century Syllabus

Abstract

While the scholarship of teaching and learning literature has made great advances in our understanding of how learning might best occur, the syllabus as a teaching and learning tool appears to have been almost completely left out of the developmental conversation. Overwhelmingly, extant literature about syllabi and their use focuses on operational course norms—what to include, policies to be delineated, structural aspects to be covered. However, the student development literature and in particular, the Generation Y age cohort literature, indicates that information processing norms may increasingly degrade students’ ability to use course syllabi for their intended purpose. In this article, we explore how and why the role of a course syllabus has changed, particularly in the management education realm, using the andragogy literature to frame the discussion. Employing four analytic frames from the current syllabus development literature—syllabus as contract, as power, as communication or signaling device, and as collaboration—we offer current and andragogically revised excerpts from our own syllabi as part of the conversation.