Most adults, including college students, are unconcerned with the amount of personal information available about them on the Web, and don’t take steps to limit its availability.
According to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project released yesterday, 60 percent of surveyed adult Internet users aren’t worried about their “digital footprints,” like their home address or phone number, being easily traced through search engines.
Of those indifferent adults, 17 percent (most of them college age, 18 to 29) are still cautious, after a fashion. Even though they report being unworried about the amount of personal information that will turn up in Google, they actively limit it.—Hurley Goodall
18 Responses to People Don’t Worry About Getting Personal Online
ksledge - September 8, 2011 at 4:13 pm
I agree that fairness is extremely important and the only way to do it right is to set all of the rules in the beginning. I think that that particular reason for syllabus bloat is fine.
puretoo - September 8, 2011 at 4:21 pm
Fight the bloat. Move all of the generic materials to a set of “General Course Guidelines” or “Standard Operating Procedures”; mention them (by name and URL) in your syllabus; and require students (e.g. through some online form) to acknowledge having read, reviewed, understood, and agreed to them. I did this many years ago — http://www.csun.edu/~egodard/sop.html — and my syllabi are never more than a single, double-sided page.
bondage2 - September 8, 2011 at 5:21 pm
One reason my syllabi have gotten longer is an increasing number of requirements from the university administration that faculty spell things out on the syllabus, including, for example, an inclement weather policy. Often these requirements come with administration boilerplate. And who has time to fight that all day? Copy, paste and put it in, because if you don’t…
Another reason is that students are adept at formulating excuses and objections beginning with, ” But you never said…” which can only be countered with, “You never read.”
Bottom line, with all the things I have to do, making sure my syllabus prose is not too prolix for student taste is way down on my list of priorities.
intellidemia - September 8, 2011 at 7:32 pm
As the founders of the Syllabus Institute and self-proclaimed Syllabus Geeks at Intellidemia, we have definitely seen our fair share of perspectives on this topic.
It is true that syllabi are becoming “bloated.” A considerable amount of legal language related to institutional, departmental, and course-level polices comes through, especially since so many more people are putting their hands in the syllabus process: Provosts, Deans, Chairs, Instructional Designers, Assessment Coordinators, Teaching Assistants, just to name a few.
At the same time many faculty members feel this (1) reduces their academic freedom and (2) makes syllabi unnecessarily complicated and burdensome. But we think this is with good reason. There is an increasing focus on assessment, particularly at the course-level by specialized accreditors like ABET, NCATE, AACSB, and others. Further, with the rise in adjunct faculty, more of the management of syllabi is left to the administration. Maybe
most importantly, and like Robert writes, it is better to set the expectation than to leave it to question.
All of this stems from an interest in gaining greater consistency and fairness across the institution. We fully support “bloated” syllabi that are drafted with thoughtful concern for the student, the instructor, and the institution as a whole.
-Judd
DianaNicholetteJeon - September 8, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Great idea. Think I will try this in the spring.
rick1952 - September 8, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Is it really “bloat” if it provides necessary information, however contractual it may be? I think Puretoo has the right idea – make the legalese an addendum and require acknowledgement of review by the student. Good practice for all the fine, legal print students will encounter in all of their professional and personal business. This just reflects the gradual but accelerating process of changing educational institutions to match the business model. Not saying that is a good thing, but it is what is happening.
austinbarry - September 9, 2011 at 12:28 am
In my day, a syllabus was a course outline, perhaps with a vague (or precise) schedule attached to it. Perhaps one page was about class rules and procedures, but this might be a separate document (this made sense – the rules and procedures might be similar for all the instructors classes, but the course outline was different for each course). Now it seems the only thing missing from the “syllabus” is a limited warranty and a damage waiver.
cjones77 - September 9, 2011 at 7:23 am
Over the eight years that I have taught at a community college, my syllabi get longer each year. As bondage2 mentioned, some of the increase is due to additional requirements asked for by administration. Additionally, my syllabi have grown in length due to the interaction with students. After my first semester or so, I realized how important it is to lay out clear boundaries on attendance and late work. During the past couple of years, I have had to add a section on proper technology use in the classroom, turn cellphones off, no texting, no Facebook during class, ect. The meat of my syllabus is still the typical course outline, course description, and student learning outcomes, but the sections dealing with student behavior have greatly increased.
copesan - September 9, 2011 at 7:43 am
So-called “syllabus bloat” is not our “problem,” but the context. If our standard is the abbreviated syllabus of several decades ago, then we are not accounting for significant changes in culture and context. The college students of today and their parents are different; administrators are on the front lines of this difference (and it can be ugly) and trying to manage it by asking faculty to include certain information in their syllabi, etc.
I agree with those who noted that so-called syllabus bloat is efficient, in that it clearly states policies in one place up front. It is also just, in that it clearly states rules, consequences and possibilities for every student and thus promotes eqality of experience for all students (rather than having to rely on my increasingly suspect memory as to what I said to Susie in this situation two weeks ago now that I’m dealing with Jimmy).
I agree with the author: lets focus on the course, and get the nuts and bolts stuff handled in the syllabus, and move on to the process of learning.
graddirector - September 9, 2011 at 8:31 am
I think a recent hall way conversation in my department between several experienced faculty and a new faculty member got to the heart of the problem with “syllabus bloat”. In most cases, everything in the new syllabi was also true 30 years ago, however, it seems that the rules for appropriate behavior were more “self apparent” to both students and faculty so that they did not need to be stated (perhaps this is the selectivity of my aging memory from my student days though). One concern is that as one addresses more (hopefully unusual) situations in a syllabus, will the students find more creative ways to be outrageous?
The most recent one arose during a colleague’s lecture when a group of guys were caught watching hard core porn on a lap top in the back of a large theater style classroom . Does one really need to say in a syllabus “do not watch porn in class” with stated penalties? In this case, the punishment was public embarrassment of the offenders by a clever professor, but should they have also lost “points from their grade” or some other more formal punishment :)? I am not sure why it seems that there has been such an apparent increase in students with no clue about acceptable behavior in a professional setting. However, due to the legalization of “college” experience, I think syllabus bloat is inevitable. One of my departmental colleagues has been sued and lost over a vague grading policy in his syllabus.
chaz - September 9, 2011 at 9:14 am
Of course, the downside is that no student will read it.
depressiveprof - September 9, 2011 at 9:37 am
Perhaps it’s time to go back and read The Death of Common Sense. Basic tenet: we have somehow decided that if we pass enough rules, nothing bad will ever happen. Hard to fathom that when Joey or Susie says “I never knew (that I couldn’t use my cell phone/cheat/not show up for exams/etc.)” the instructor is at fault if s/he did not have a rule about that in his/her syllabus and “it’s not fair.” So we keep adding “rules” to our syllabi, our students become more helpless and in need of rules to figure out how to live their lives, and eager to find creative ways to circumvent the existing rules which, of course, leads to more rules. And it’s not just in our classes – look at, for example, accreditation standards and codes of ethics.
jwschreiner - September 9, 2011 at 12:27 pm
It is important to be transparent and up front about policies and standards, esp. course-specific ones like grading, etc. This can be done on the syllabus or an online location, as puretoo suggests. Regarding more general institutional policies, I want my students to be aware of them for their benefit as learners, so I include them – it is an opportunity to teach about academic culture (and even critique it, if that is an objective of your course).
Regarding student behavior, keeping the classroom interesting and active can do a lot to help prevent poor behavior. The syllabus doesn’t need to list every possible bad behavior, just indicate what is expected in terms of respect and, if you like, that the instructor can use her or his discretion concerning behavior. I like to ask my class during the first week what a ‘good learner’ is or what is required for a ‘good discussion.’ They proceed to list several characteristics that I then propose become our class agreement (it comes from them, not me, after all…). Students are then empowered to help me maintain a positive and productive learning environment.
As for ‘bloat,’ check out these innovative ways to present the syllabus (from ProfHacker): http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/creative-approaches-to-the-syllabus/35621?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
22161952 - September 9, 2011 at 4:53 pm
… the syllabus that needs an “executive summary”…
dismalist - September 9, 2011 at 5:56 pm
My syllabi are now two to three pages long, and they have been two to three pages long since twenty five years ago. Full stop.
schellenberg - September 10, 2011 at 12:52 am
I concur with puretoo’s (Ellis Godard’)s early comment and encourage everyone to check out his exhaustive and impressive link. I’ve been moving in this direction by slowly building an FAQ folder in my LMS system which I can copy from course to course and toggle on relevant FAQ for the given course.
Regarding the increasing administrative requirements to include “standard” policy statement’s in syllabi . . . if the statement is standard policy, then it should in the catalog (i.e., the university-level TOS). . . and if it is in the catalog, then each instructor should not be required to duplicate it. Of course, this logic presumes that instructors themselves know these standard policies, which might be an additional motivating force behind such administrative directives!
amberheadlights - September 10, 2011 at 2:21 pm
I don’t think my syllabi are particularly bloated: 4-5 pages with an additional 1 page grading rubric for written work and a 1 page grading rubric for participation. However, I don’t think the information helps with anything except for strengthening my position, should a student complain about her grade to the department chair. Last year, I started noticing an increase in students recognizing a policy that they violated and instead arguing why the policy (e.g. talking in class, page minimums on assignments, etc) should not exist. In another case, a student recognized that it was a rule which had been given to them in writing, but asserted that it was not clear to them that this particular rule was “actually important.” I think a lot of students perceive longer syllabi and grading rubrics as just more bureaucracy–the same students who do things in class that one previously would have thought didn’t need to be mentioned in a syllabi often still don’t understand why there’s a policy penalizing them for this behavior–but it’s necessary to have in print in the event of escalation.
Raphael - September 23, 2011 at 5:46 pm
I had to look up what a “syllabus” is supposed to be. I study in Germany, and I have never come across such a thing.
Technical rules are partly defined by examination rules and module handbook and partly (course-specific details) verbally and on the course website. Most courses use similar models, do there is usually a mutual understanding. Special rules for written exams fit on an A4 sheet but are redundant, anyway. There is hardly ever any trouble there.
Regarding behaviour, it seems common sense, morality and mutual respect are sufficient regulators.
I think it is sad that people who come together to learn would need a contract to regulate their interaction.