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Teaching portfolio syllabi: full or abridged?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have a really small question about the sample syllabi one includes in a teaching portfoli. How full should these syllabi be? My full syllabi include all sorts of info about grading, course expectations, description, info about plagiarism and writing help resources, etc. Am I right to assume potential employers don't want to wade through all of this, and so I should strip down the versions in my teaching portfolio to the essentials (maybe reading list, course description…what else)? If so, what should I include and not? 

Good questions! I'm not sure on all of them, but I would think that info on grading and course expectations are good to include, as I've known search committee members who care a lot about how things are graded, how grading is distributed in the course (across different kinds of assignments), and so on. I'm not sure about other things, though, such as plagiarism policies, etc. What do you all think?

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3 responses to “Teaching portfolio syllabi: full or abridged?”

  1. G

    You should have at least one example of a full syllabus. Otherwise your file will look very generic. People will be able to see what you value as a teacher, and how you approach teaching when your syllabus has all the stuff on it.

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  2. Michel

    I like to mostly see abridged syllabi. I mostly care to see how you describe the course and what the readings are. In particular, I like to see a good balance of authors and perspectives, and I’d rather they not look like a boring bog-standard same-old syllabus. I’m looking for innovation, and hoping to steal ideas for my own courses!
    The main value of a full syllabus is that it gives some minimal insight into your assessments, but TBH I think it’s pretty minimal on that front. Most of a full syllabus is university-mandated material anyway, and not particularly relevant to our institution.
    One thing I’ve done for my own abridged syllabi is note which assignments are due (roughly) when, and I think that does enough to give some insight into the assessment structure. But really, I expect to learn about your assessments in the teaching statement or, for particularly novel showcase-type assessments,I expect to see an example later in the portfolio. .

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  3. once a grad student

    I include one full syllabus on mine, and then cut out the repeated parts about grading, plagiarism, etc. in subsequent syllabi (with a note mentioning that this is what I’ve done).

    Reply

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