Can the syllabus actually impact students' perceptions of a course regarding their personal needs and motivation? (Exploring consistencies between syllabi’s qualities and benefit on students’ attitude toward a course)

Faculties at the University of Liège, just like so many of their academic colleagues worldwide, have to write and orally present a syllabus for each of their courses every year. Although very demanding, this effort is clearly described by many authors as an important opportunity to make a decisive first impression and to favourably affect students’ attitude and perceptions toward a given course regarding their personal needs and motivation notably.
Even if the hypothesis seem plausible and inspiring for practice at first sight, the likelihood of a given syllabus to actually impact those perfection in the right way still has to be experienced. So, for a syllabus whose qualities / characteristics seem to make it likely or not to impact positively or negatively learners’ perceptions of courses linked to their motivation and individual needs, will consistent effects be observed on the ones who have read / heard it?

Among the students’ perceptions that an effective syllabus would be likely to positively impact according to the literature, some appear to correspond to the three determining factors of the motivational dynamics’ model from Roland Viau [1997]: the perception of controllability [Bain, 2004; Lang, 2006; Hudd, 2003], the perception of activities value [Wasley, 2008, Hammons & Shock, 1994; Johnson, 2006] and the perception of competency [Slattery & Carlson, 2005; Madson, Melchert, Whipp, 2004]. Other theoretical benefits of the syllabus on students’ attitude refer to the “consideration of what students need in order to be successful learners” [Hess & Whittington, 2003] or the support of “developmental needs of the students” [Haugen, 1998]. Here, items used to check learners’ perceptions and to observe if “the syllabus addresses the question of whether the class will meet student needs” [Birdsall, 1989] have been closely related to the levels of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Chart.

In 2008, within its mandatory program of pedagogical training for new faculties, the IFRES (Institute for Training and Research in Higher Education) has created a thematic seminar offering guidelines to promote syllabi aiming notably to motivate students and meet developmental needs. At the beginning of the following academic year, ten syllabi and introduction speeches - meant to Freshmen or Sophomores and designed by ten faculties who followed the seminar - were collected and recorded in order to be analyzed. Their likelihood to impact the targeted students’ perceptions was then rated according to criteria rigorously derived from literature. During the second class of the ten teachers, questionnaires were submitted to their 1300 First/Second-Year students in order to investigate the possible corollary impact of those transmitted pieces of information on their concerned perceptions. In order to measure hypothetical gains due to syllabi, couples of symmetrical pre and post items were included.

Data collected from the students concerning their post perceptions and their answers about their reading / hearing or not of their respective syllabi /oral speeches are currently crossed. Chi squares are calculated to identify significant relationships between them, as well as correlations indexes. Afterwards, synoptic tables are produced to observe consistencies between ratings of teachers’ performances and students’ levels of declared perceptions. At this stage, it appears that variables regarding motivation are clearly independent for about 2/3 of the studied relations. Nevertheless, considering the cases where the X²test indicate links between the data, concrete consistencies can be observed between the ratings obtained from the content analysis of syllabi or speeches and the observed percentages of students declaring good perceptions. Besides, the comparison of the percentages of students declaring good perceptions before and after having received syllabi and speeches clearly indicate frequent consistencies with the syllabi’s ratings on the same variables.

Looking at the impressive number of universities everywhere asking or urging their teachers to produce syllabi for each of their courses, it seems obvious that this task has become a classic in any faculty’s pedagogical practice. This generalization also seems to indicate a consensus on the fact that this effort make sense and can be useful, particularly for students. This research aims to objectify this usefulness in order to guide and promote professors’ reflection on effective syllabus - for instance in the context of a regulated training seminar -, especially since it is also considered to benefit as planning tool for faculties [Littlefield, 1999; Matejka & Kurke, 1994 ; Sinor & Kaplan], or as permanent record for promotions or program consistency [Parkes & Harris, 2002; Leibow, 2003 ; Seldin, 1998].