Teaching Matters is a new pedagogy column from the CCTL. It aims to further the pedagogical conversation at UChicago by providing a venue for faculty, instructors, and CCTL staff to share their reflections on their approach to teaching, discuss strategies and innovations from their classrooms, and respond to ideas and trends in pedagogical practice and discourse. Those interested in submitting an essay may consult our guidelines.
First Impressions: Expectations and Tone in Syllabus Construction
In our first Teaching Matters essay, Russell Johnson, Assistant Director of the Undergraduate Religious Studies Program and an Associate Pedagogy Fellow in the CCTL, offers his reflections on how to approach the tone of a syllabus. In ways large and small, a syllabus helps to set expectations and to establish the learning environment of a course. While we often focus as teachers on the importance of clarity and transparency in syllabus construction, tone can also go a long way toward cultivating the kind of learning environment we aim for in our classroom—but this can be a difficult aspect of the syllabus to pin down.