Building on the concept that creating, managing, and maintaining syllabi takes time which can be quantified as a direct cost, the administrative costs can be easily outlines by tracking the route of the syllabus and how many hands the syllabus passes through. Click each of the following steps to learn more.
Creation
Instructor researches syllabi and revisits syllabi from the prior semester to author an entirely new syllabus for an upcoming semester. Oftentimes a TA may have a hand in the review and creation of this document. The other mechanism for syllabus creation comes from administrators who create a syllabus template; this template is given to the faculty to model or build their syllabus on.
Collection
Sometime before the new semester starts, an academic administrator—dean, department chair, director, or admin in assessment—conduct a call for syllabi for review and approval. This is considered the collection process; some school send a message to faculty to upload their syllabi to a shared drive, present a hard copy, or send an email with the syllabus attached. More often than not, the administrator will have to track down the rouge instructor who failed to submit their syllabus.
Evaluation
Once the syllabi are collected and sitting on a desk, in an inbox, or on a shared drive, the painstaking process of checking off mandated syllabus requirements begins. This process is not often left to one person, but a cross section of university administrators or by a committee. For the accredited San Bernardino Community College District who offers over 3,500 courses per semester, evaluation takes up a lot of manpower.
Revision
If a date is wrong, mandated policies aren’t present, outcomes aren’t clear or any other discrepancy that fails to meet program standards or ensure academic excellence, syllabi get pushed back to the instructors with notes to revise and resubmit.
Distribution
Once the syllabi are approved, administrators, faculty, and sometimes even technical administrators are tasked with uploading syllabi to the learning management system, student information system, college portals, final folder on the shared drive, or in-house syllabus system. Additionally, an administrator may print and store a final copy of the syllabus in a binder, folder, or filing cabinet.
Access
The next step in the syllabus process is having an administrator check that the approved syllabus is in fact where it needs to be for access by students, faculty, academic advisors, the registrar’s office, academic administrators, and accrediting bodies.
Review
It’s not uncommon for the stored syllabi, once they are uploaded or stored, for an administrator to run a random check to ensure that syllabi are not only accessible, but also represent the syllabus that was approved for that semester. This review process ensures that if an on-site accreditor were to run a random check during accreditation or a period of reaffirmation, they would find the correct and most up-to-date syllabus.
Create/Revise
You made it through that semester unscathed and a new semester is right around the corner, time to start the cycle again!
