Introduction
A syllabus plays an important role within a course—from outlining course-specific policies to detailing course expectations to familiarizing students with university-wide policies. Many instructors dedicate a full day of class, often the first day, to reviewing the syllabus with students, while others emphasize its importance via email or course announcements. Because instructors recognize the importance of these documents and know they often serve as the ‘first impression’ of the course and instructor, many of us labor over our syllabi, not only updating due dates but also revising course content to better meet the needs of our students or better clarify our expectations and policies. Ultimately, a course syllabus offers many opportunities for making a meaningful and positive first impression with students at the start of the semester when feelings of overwhelm are common for many, if not most, undergraduate students.
Perhaps surprisingly, first impressions are shown to matter to students more than an instructor’s reputation (Buchert et al. 2008). The importance of making a good first impression may be even greater in an online course, since the syllabus is the first connection a student has with an instructor. In ‘humanized’ online courses, the syllabus is intentionally designed to welcome and support students. For example, it is written in a supportive tone and uses asset-based language to encourage growth, cultivate hope, establish expectations for success, and recognize the array of experiences and knowledge students bring to the class as a value that enriches learning.
Recently, many educators have imagined new opportunities for the syllabus. Bain (2004) explores the concept of a promising syllabus in What the Best College Teachers Do, and Harrington and Thomas (2018) write about the transformative power of a syllabus in Designing a Motivational Syllabus. In a 2011 study, Harnish and Bridges found that a syllabus written in a friendly tone has a significant impact on how students perceive an instructor by unhinging the common student expectation that “faculty are unapproachable” (Harnish and Bridges 2011). One strategy that has been employed to begin connecting with students and provide them with course expectations prior to the start of class is the liquid syllabus. A ‘liquid syllabus’ (Pacansky-Brock 2021, 2014, 2017) is (a) housed outside of the learning management system and (b) provided at least one week prior to the start of classes. The term ‘liquid syllabus’ comes from its similarity to water, which has no fixed state, rather, it is dynamic and responds to the ever-changing needs of a learning environment (Pacansky-Brock 2021, 2014, 2017). The former element is important for students who may not yet be familiar with how to sign into the university’s learning management system, while the latter element is considered to be a humanizing effort since students will learn what they need to succeed in the first week of a course (Pacansky-Brock et al. 2020).
Humanizing education has been defined as the use of strategies and practices to incorporate students and instructors as social agents into the learning process and enable them to feel connected with each other (Czerkawski and Schmidt 2017; Gleason 2021). Across multiple frameworks and models related to humanizing education, three elements are consistently emphasized as essential: student agency, instructor presence, and peer presence (Li et al. 2022). Utilizing a liquid syllabus incorporates instructor presence by encouraging instructors to introduce themselves and share content prior to the start of the semester (Paquette 2016).
While there is a lot of coverage on the need to implement a liquid syllabus, there is a lack of evidence surrounding the impact of this practice on students’ perceptions and knowledge of course polices. Inside Higher Ed has featured articles about the liquid syllabus reducing barriers to access of information and supporting equity, but it does not discuss the impact or adoption of this practice by students (D’Agostino 2022). Various teaching and learning centers around the U.S. have web pages devoted to the practice of creating a liquid syllabus, but none have assessed if creating a liquid syllabus impacts students’ knowledge about course policies and information.
This study seeks to understand the impact of the liquid syllabus on students’ knowledge of course policies and perceptions of the syllabus (i.e., providing a traditional versus novel form). To facilitate this goal, we explore the effectiveness and satisfaction of various liquid syllabus modalities compared to courses that do not provide a liquid syllabus. A total of five faculty from three different disciplines—namely, public health, philosophy, and biology—took part in this study. Some courses had true comparison groups (i.e., different sections of the same course), while others compared results to different courses the same faculty member taught. A total of 617 students across eight courses participated in this study; no student was taking more than one of these eight courses at the same time. After detailing our methods and results, we offer a discussion of those results as well as suggestions for instructors in light of our findings.
Methods
Instructors and Courses
This study was conducted during Fall Semester of 2021. A total of five faculty members from three different departments agreed to explore the topic of the liquid syllabus and add questions to their syllabus knowledge check quiz administered at the beginning of the semester. Two faculty were from the Philosophy Department, one was from the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior, and one was from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University at Buffalo. All of the faculty decided to explore this topic after discussing it in a community of practice that they attended weekly hosted by the University at Buffalo. All of the instructors that took part in this study have had advanced training in teaching and pedagogy, including the use of video and syllabus creation.
A total of eight courses taught by these instructors were included in this analysis. Four courses used a standard syllabus that students were provided on the first day of class in a PDF form: PHI 107, PUB 325A, PHI 237, and MIC 301-Thursday. The remaining four courses (PHI 341, PHI 353, PUB 325B, and MIC 301-Tuesday) provided students with a liquid syllabus one week in advance of class, in addition to the standard syllabus. Notably, the format of the liquid syllabus varied between classes. For PHI 341 and PHI 353, an online website containing course policies and schedules was designed as a digital magazine. The magazine layout used the The Paris Review as a model; that magazine was selected by the relevant professor simply because he appreciated its attractive layout and organization. PUB 325B used a liquid syllabus consisting of a video. In MIC 301-Tuesday, a Google site was created that provided course information along with a welcome video and a second video detailing course policies and scheduling.
Survey
This study was deemed to have exempt status by the University at Buffalo IRB. First, each faculty member agreed to add questions to their already existing syllabus review quiz designed to assess key course polices. All quizzes were given under the same conditions, including being open-syllabus, outside of class time, and untimed. Relevant questions included the following:
- What is the required textbook for the course?
- What day during finals week is the final exam for this course?
- When are [course-specific assessments] due?
In addition to these three factual questions, students were asked to disclose how much of the traditional syllabus they read and, if relevant, how much of the liquid syllabus was engaged. The relevant questions were as follows:
- Approximately how much of the syllabus did you read (or view) [for the standard course syllabus]?
- Approximately how much of the [magazine, video, website] did you read (or view) [for the liquid syllabus, if present]?
Lastly, a qualitative question was asked to assess student experience. The relevant question – included in the courses in which this was relevant – was the following:
- What did you think about getting the [liquid] syllabus early?
Data Collection and Analysis
Each faculty member who participated in this study typically assigns a syllabus quiz for students to complete within the first few weeks of the course. This serves as an assessment of understanding for course policies and procedures. Once the syllabus quizzes were complete, the faculty de-identified the content and included the three quantitative questions and qualitative results in a spreadsheet placed into a secure folder for analysis by another faculty member whose class was not part of the study. Quantitative data was then analyzed using frequencies and descriptive statistics. Qualitative data was reviewed for common themes and coded by a member of the study team, and another member of the team confirmed the coding to ensure interrater reliability. No identifiers or demographics were collected as part of this study.
Results
Overview
While demographic characteristics were not collected as part of this study, the students were all enrolled at a research-intensive institution that has an enrollment of over 30,000 students. In Fall 2021, the breakdown of gender is 52% male and 48% female. Approximately 48% of students identified as white, 18% as non-residents (i.e., international students), 14% as Asian, 7% as Black or African American, and 7% as Hispanic or Latino; others are unknown.
A total of 617 students participated in this study between all eight of the courses. No student was enrolled in multiple courses listed below. Table 1 includes data on the enrollments for each course, the number of students who completed the survey, and the response rate in percentage form.
| Course | Student Completion | Response Rate |
|---|---|---|
| PHI 237 | 104 out of 150 | 69.3% |
| MIC 301-Tuesday | 184 out of 194 | 94.8% |
| MIC 301-Thursday | 93 out of 103 | 90.3% |
| PUB 325 Section A | 42 out of 42 | 100% |
| PUB 321 Section B | 44 out of 44 | 100% |
| PHI 107 | 114 out of 118 | 96.6% |
| PHI 341 | 26 out of 26 | 100% |
| PHI 353 | 16 out of 16 | 100% |
Policy Recall
Students were fairly accurate at answering questions related to the course policies no matter the type of syllabus (i.e., standard or liquid). Table 2 provides complete results of the courses and percent correct for each question. Two courses presented in the liquid syllabus (PHI 341, PHI 353) and one as a standard syllabus (PHI 107), all taught by the same instructor, had lower scores than other courses on the question of contacting the professor; PHI 353 also had lower scores than other courses on the question regarding the date of the final.
| Standard Syllabus | Liquid Syllabus | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PUB 325A | PHI 237 | PHI 107 | MIC 301 Th | PUB 325B | PHI 341 | PHI 353 | MIC 301 Tu | |
| Textbook Choice | 100% | 99% | 96% | 96% | 100% | 100% | 81% | 96% |
| Contact Professor | 86% | 85% | 22% | N/A | 98% | 58% | 19% | N/A |
| Finals Date | 100% | 100% | 84% | 76% | 100% | 96% | 40% | 85% |
Liquid vs. Standard Syllabus Control Groups
Two of the courses evaluated—PUB 325 and MIC 301—had control groups in which one section of the course received the liquid syllabus while the other received the standard PDF syllabus. To ensure students also had access to the same materials, the standard PDF template was included within the course shell of the liquid syllabus course within the learning management system. When comparing the liquid versus standard syllabus (Table 3), students who received the liquid syllabus performed better on these questions than those who received the standard syllabus.
| PUB 325A (Standard) | PUB 325B (Liquid) | MIC 301 Th (Standard) | MIC 301 Tu (Liquid) | |
| Textbook Choice | 100% | 100% | 96% | 96% |
| Contact Professor | 86% | 98% | N/A | N/A |
| Finals Date | 100% | 100% | 76% | 85% |
Student Engagement with Syllabus Content
Students were next asked what percentage of the syllabus they read (Table 4). When comparing the two standard sections of the control courses, it seems that students in PUB 325 were more likely to read 100 or 75% of the syllabus compared to students in MIC 301. Yet when comparing the liquid syllabus courses and asking students what percentage of the liquid syllabus versus the PDF version provided, it was found that students in MIC 301 were more likely to read the majority of the PDF syllabus as compared to the Google site. The opposite was seen for PUB 325, where the students were more likely to watch the video liquid syllabus rather than read the PDF version.
| Percent | PUB 325B (PDF) | PUB 325A (Video) | MIC 301 Tu (Google Site) | MIC 301 Th (PDF) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100% | 79% (33) | 48% (20) | 5% (9) | 64% (116) |
| 75% | 7% (3) | 33% (14) | 10% (19) | 39% (46) |
| 50% | 10% (4) | 12% (5) | 7% (13) | 10% (12) |
| 25% | 5% (2) | 7% (3) | 21% (38) | 5% (6) |
| 0% | 0 | 0 | 57% (105) | 1% (1) |
Student Syllabus Preferences
Students were asked about their thoughts on receiving access to the syllabus or liquid components one week before class started. A total of 216 responses were coded for students who received the liquid syllabus prior to the start of the course and 203 responses for students who received the PDF version of the syllabus. It was found that the type of syllabus mattered less than just sending students a syllabus at least one week ahead of the course, allowing students to begin preparing for the course (Table 5).
| Question | Theme | Liquid + Syllabus n (%) | Syllabus n (%) | Sample comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What did you think about getting access to the [liquid] syllabus early? [i.e., 1 week before classes started] | Being ready | 166 (77) | 139 (68) | -It helped me prepare for the course and what to expect in terms of course work |
| Appreciation | 81 (38) | 71 (35) | -I appreciated getting the syllabus early.
-I loved it! | |
| No difference | 22 (10) | 27 (13) | -Didn’t think anything of it.
-I didn’t look at it before the semester started. | |
| Easing Anticipation | 10 (5) | 17 (8) | -There was a lot of anticipation waiting to see if classes were actually in person and receiving the syllabus early helped me get ready.
-It gave me more time and made the first week less overwhelming. | |
| Fitting Your Schedule | 8 (4) | 22 (11) | -I am able to decide if the class will fit into my schedule for the semester. | |
| Creating fear | 4 (2) | 0 (0) | -Made me anxious.
-Scared me. |
Discussion
Generally, we found that students performed better on the policy-knowledge questions when they were provided with the standard PDF syllabus. We posit that this may be due to familiarity bias regarding the traditional syllabus modality; in other words, they may find it easier to navigate a PDF when looking for answers than they do when using a novel modality. It is also worth noting that a PDF syllabus allows for a word-searching function prevented by at least some liquid syllabus modalities. For example, if a student wants to answer the question about the final exam date, they can make answering that question easier by simply searching for the term ‘final’ in the PDF document. When this convenience is not available to them (or when using it requires executing a world-search function on multiple website pages rather than in a single document), this inconvenience may negatively impact their willingness to carefully review a video, magazine, or website and thus decrease accuracy in responses.
However, in some courses that used an engaging video (in contrast to a magazine or website) as the liquid syllabus, the liquid video provided both higher satisfaction scores and higher accuracy scores on policy-related questions than did even the PDF version. We think the first of these results—the higher satisfaction scores – can be explained by the humanizing features of a video liquid syllabus. Put simply, students can see their instructor and/or hear their voice. It is worth nothing that the video liquid syllabus offers an increased affordance with respect to conveying personality, thoughtfulness, humor, sympathy, sincerity, and more. We posit that students respond well to this more personable modality. The second of these results—the higher accuracy scores—is perhaps more surprising. We posit that a short video syllabus is still accessible (like the PDF version), while arguably being even more convenient for students than a PDF syllabus. Put differently, many students may prefer to watch a fifteen-minute video rather than read a fifteen-page document, even if the latter is searchable. The digestibility of the video modality may account for its success in helping students retain syllabus information.
We also suggest that, regardless of modality, it is beneficial to provide syllabi approximately one week before the start of courses. This allows students to be better prepared for the first week. Moreover, it allows students to drop the course before investing more time in it if they find that course expectations do not align with their preferences. While much of the discussion has focused on the modality aspect of the liquid syllabus, we want to reiterate the importance of the timing aspect of the liquid syllabus.
We want to explicitly acknowledge some limitations to our study. First, not all of our courses had proper controls due to faculty course assignments not always allowing for this. Second, the questions we included in the survey did not include questions about university policies or even about lengthier course-specific expectations (e.g., attendance policies, discussion policies). We wanted to ensure we could ask the same questions across all of our classes, but the result is that we did not assess student retention of some (lengthier or more idiosyncratic) aspects of our syllabi. Third, some of the results are likely impacted by the writing styles, design skills, speech patterns, etc. of each of the instructors who contributed to this study. Fourth, we recognize that sending out the liquid syllabi early—and not doing so with the standard syllabi—may have influenced our results, rather than modality being the sole factor or variable assessed. However, we made this choice because of when we believe that faculty traditionally provide standard syllabi: namely, only the first day of class. But to be clear, we do not think this limitation invalidates our results, particularly in light of our data in Table 4. To reiterate that data, we found that 79% of students in one section of PUB 345 viewed 100% of the PDF as opposed to 48% watching the video in the other section of the same course. Even more strikingly, in the Thursday section of MIC 301, 64% read 100% of the PDF syllabus, whereas only 5% read 100% of the Google site. Therefore, we do not think that the difference in timing fully accounts for our outcomes. And lastly, it should be noted that there are a variety of disciplines in this study, and thus, students may have different expectations on course structure and course polices related to the norms of the discipline.
Despite acknowledging these limitations, we want to reiterate what we collectively took from this research, which will have clear implications for our teaching practices going forward. First, PDF syllabi and liquid video syllabi were the most successful. More time-consuming options, such as the magazine syllabus or website, proved less effective regarding promoting students’ retention of syllabus information. It stood out to us that was most time-effective for us (i.e., traditional or video) correlated with what our data suggested was most helpful for our students. On the other hand, it is clear to us that students valued receiving syllabi at least a week early. This does place an additional demand on faculty to prepare early for the semester and to contact students even before enrollment for a class is finalized. But if this improves student preparation for and experience of the relevant course, being prepared to distribute our syllabi at least a week early is a commitment each of us now makes to our students, regardless of the modality of the relevant syllabus.
Conclusion
Our conclusions are three-fold: (1) traditional PDF syllabi and liquid video syllabi are most successful with respect to students retaining information accurately and reporting greater satisfaction; (2) liquid magazine syllabi and liquid website syllabi are less desirable; and (3) sending a syllabus a week early is greatly appreciated by students. To elaborate on (2), creating websites or magazines is more time-intensive for faculty versus creating short videos or PDF documents. Since these first two modalities were associated with less accurate responses and lower satisfaction scores among students than were PDF documents or short videos, it is hard to justify the investment of time required to make a course website or magazine. While these may be appealing to us as instructors because they are aesthetically pleasing and relatively easy to re-use, there may be a disconnect in what we think we are achieving versus what students find most user-friendly. It should also be noted that this study includes several disciplines including the "applied" discipline (public health), a "pure" STEM field (biology), and a humanities (philosophy) class, so our findings do not reflect a discipline-specific reaction to the liquid syllabus.
We would also like to emphasize that any syllabus is likely to be insufficient on its own (i.e., without reinforcement). Reinforcement methods can include discussing the syllabus at least briefly during the first week of class, regularly referencing relevant elements of the syllabus during later class sessions, and including syllabus-related activities or assessments in course design.
Future research should explore if a liquid syllabus could be more effective in different levels of courses, contrasting entry-level courses to upper-level courses. Also, we would be interested to assess how using more humanizing language within a syllabus impacts student perception of an instructor in a course (rather than assessing retention of their policies).
