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The discussion in this section assumes that a full syllabus has been given to you when you were assigned your instructional responsibilities. If you were not given a syllabus, you should consult your departmental chairperson or try to talk with a faculty member who has taught the course in a previous year. Constructing an effective syllabus can be a difficult task that often requires the assistance of those more experienced in your field.
Even when you are given a syllabus, however, you may find that you want to augment it. At minimum a good syllabus should contain (1) a list of the readings for the course; (2) due dates for each of the readings and assignments; (3) a general discussion of the criteria that will be used to evaluate students' performance-that is, determine their grades-(4) a summary of the policies regarding attendance or late papers; and (5) your office hours and telephone number.
If you are in charge of the entire course, there are two additional kinds of information that you can included in a syllabus. First, you might give some thought to assigning topics for discussion to individual lectures or sets of lectures. The practice of assigning a topic is especially helpful when you superimpose the topics on the reading list; that is, you assign each topic to a set of readings. Second, you can give the students a set of study questions to consider while completing the readings. Study questions are a very effective way of helping students focus on the more relevant parts of the text and generally will also increase the amount of time students spend preparing for class.
The course history and demographics. If at all possible, you should try to talk with someone who held your position in a previous quarter. Talking with someone who has been through the experience is your best source of information for questions concerning class composition, common misconceptions, complaints, and expectations of the students who typically take the course. If you are armed with this information ahead of time, you are less likely to be disarmed by sudden and often disruptive discoveries about who your students are and what they know.