The Student Government Association passed a proposal on Oct. 27 that would amend the current faculty policy of how professors deliver their syllabus to students.

Kevin Evans, secondary education junior and SGA vice president, authored the fundamental syllabus proposal that is currently being reviewed by faculty.

“This issue [with the current policy] is that many students do not get their syllabus until the first day of classes,” Evans said. “Getting the student that information is very vital — one, for their success, and, two, we feel that it will be beneficial to the retention rates on campus.”

The focus of the proposal is to create a guideline for faculty members to post a fundamental syllabus on OnCourse, outlining points such as number and type of graded assignments, basis of how the final grade is composed and a representative reading list.

“I am not looking for them to post the entire syllabus, just the important pieces,” Evans said.

The Student Recruitment and Retention Committee is currently looking over the proposal and making changes to better fit the faculty and student body.

Jay McTyier, program analyst for the Registrar, has been working with IU Bloomington on the Course Description Project, which focuses on providing information through OneStart that students will see when viewing the class before registering.

“The project was the development of an institutional utility to hold more robust course descriptions for the class bulletin,” McTyier said.

Currently, IU Bloomington is the only campus that uses this function available through OneStart. However, IU Southeast will be the first regional campus to use the program if it passes through the Faculty Senate.

“It really is a matter of cutting and pasting,” McTyier said. “If you build [a syllabus] in OnCourse, you can copy and paste it to OneStart, and, then, remove the extraneous elements.”

Evans is currently working on authoring an executive order that will amend the syllabus policy in the faculty handbook. The executive order is the first one IU Southeast has seen since 1999.

Evans said the SGA has been more focused this year on projects for the benefit of students.

“The SGA has totally rebranded ourselves, and we work totally different this year,” Evans said.

Evans said he hopes implementing the new syllabus plan will help students get a better understanding of the course and what will be required of them. He said students rely too heavily on recommendations of other students and websites, such as ratemyprofessor.com, to get course information.

“Instead of students going to Rate My Professor, I would love them just to go to [OneStart], because the information about the course comes straight from the professor,” Evans said.

Although the proposal has passed in the Student Senate, there is still work that needs to be done before presenting it to the faculty. Part of Evans’ process is requiring each SGA member to acquire signatures of 100 students in support of the proposal.

“I want 3,000 student signatures out of the 7,000 students we have here,” Evans said.

In addition to the student signatures, each SGA member is responsible for 50 surveys that will measure the use on OnCourse in their classes. The information will then be reviewed and submitted as part of the proposal for the Faculty Senate for their meeting in December.

The faculty will then decide whether the proposal will pass or fail.

“I am anticipating it to pass,” Evans said. “I don’t know any reason why it shouldn’t. It’s a really good policy, it’s just a matter of making sure the wording is correct and making sure the committee really likes it.”

There are some predetermined objections to the proposal that Evans and others involved with the process are looking to amend. The biggest issue is with faculty acceptance and involvement with the project. However, Evans said he believes they will be able to adjust to the change.

“It is very important that [faculty] use OnCourse, because we, as students, are required to use OnCourse,” Evans said. “It is a tool every faculty member should be using. If they are not, they should get trained to use it.”

The biggest change for faculty is the element of time in which they need to have their syllabus available for students to view. Instead of having a syllabus ready the first week of class, they will be required to have it ready before the pre-registration period begins.

“By asking faculty to put a fundamental syllabus out there before they have actually had time to cook it all the way, they’re concerned that they are going to raise expectations that are not going to be fulfilled,” McTyier said.

Putting a fundamental syllabus online to view during registration periods also creates a risk of students opting to take classes with easier course loads and leaving more work intensive classes with unfulfilled rosters.

“There is a risk that students will not want to take the courses that appear — in their mind — to be harder,” McTyier said. “What we find, more often than not, is that sometimes students don’t have a choice they have to take that course.”

The focus of this project is on retainment of students within classes and to help them persist to graduation.

“We do believe that if students make a better choice, if they know what they are getting in to, they are more than likely to persist in that course,” McTyier said.

For Evans, he said this project should lower withdrawal rates and help students make more informed decisions about their schedules.

If the proposal passes in the Faculty Senate, Evans said he hopes to pilot the program in the 2012 summer semesters and roll out the project, campus wide, in fall 2012.

“I am hoping that student support will push this whole campaign,” Evans said. “I can write a proposal, and I can say what I think the students want to see, but, if the students aren’t pushing their professors to use this or aren’t voicing their support for this, then it is probably going to fail.”

By HANNA WOODS

Staff

hrwoods@umail.iu.edu