Introduction

Purpose

The American University of Nigeria is dedicated to a problem-solving approach to its curriculum. Many of the professors of this institution are international, coming from many countries around the world as well as from Nigeria. Most are international experts in many disciplines that are concerned with eliminating poverty, improving the environment, promoting microfinance, improving health care, and other exploring disciplines specifically concerned with solving problems and improving conditions in third world countries.

The author was invited to consult with the faculty to help them adapt their instruction to a more problem-centered approach as represented in the book First Principles of Instruction (Merrill 2013).

A problem-centered approach differs from problem-based learning or case-based learning. [It] is much more structured. It involves presenting a specific whole complex problem to the learners, demonstrating successful completion of the problem, providing information plus demonstration plus application for each of the component skills required by the problem and then showing learners how these component skills apply to the problem (Merrill 2013, p. 26).

The author provided a workshop and an online course on problem-centered instruction. The faculty who participated in these events made significant improvements in their courses, but many of the faculty did not see the relevance of this material to their subject matter content. During the last year of this project, to encourage wider participation, the President of the university suggested that the author review the syllabi of the faculty to see how their courses compared to a problem-centered course with the goal of encouraging them to revise their courses to be more problem-centered. Initially, faculty volunteered to have their syllabi reviewed, but the new provost, who was assigned to oversee this effort, wanted wider participation and required all faculty to have the author review their syllabi. This review was conducted for over a year. Following the first review, a few faculty were able to revise their syllabus for a second review. Unfortunately, the project ended before the author was able to review a revised submission for most of the faculty.

The purpose of this report is to describe the syllabus review check-list that was developed to help faculty review their courses especially with the intent to make them more problem-centered.

Background

The Course Syllabus: A Learning-Centered Approach (O'Brian et al. 2008) provides a very good guide for preparing a syllabus for a university course. The authors suggest a checklist and they provide several examples and suggestions for each of the items in this guide. They stress “focusing on the value of your syllabus as a learning tool in your course” (Syllabus Content section ¶2). They discuss several functions that a learning-centered syllabus provides including setting the tone for your course, describing your educational philosophy, encouraging active learning, and providing a conceptual framework for the course.

Parkes and Harris (2002) identify three major purposes for a syllabus: to serve as a contract, as a permanent record, and as a learning tool. They cite the first edition of The Course Syllabus: A Learning-centered Approach (Grunert 1997) and elaborate on the syllabus as a learning tool. As a learning tool, a syllabus provides information on how to plan, how to evaluate and monitor one’s performance, and how to allocate time and resources in areas where learning is needed. It provides guidance about the learning to be done in the course. It helps students identify if they are prepared for the course and if not, what to do about it. It provides context for the course content about where it fits with other areas of the curriculum and how it might benefit the student. It might help teach broader lessons about professional behavior such as punctuality and avoiding plagiarism.

Cullen and Harris (2009) developed a rubric to be used to assess the degree of learner-centeredness through a systematic review of course syllabi. Their rubric considered a four-point rating for each of the following factors: community (i.e. accessibility of the teacher, learning rational, collaboration), power and control (i.e. teacher’s role, student’s role, outside resources, syllabus focus), evaluation/assessment (i.e. grades, feedback mechanisms, evaluation, learning outcomes, and revision/ redoing). The authors used this rubric to evaluate syllabi from two academic units involving 15 faculty in the first and 10 in the second in the same comprehensive university. Their results showed good accessibility to teachers but not a corresponding emphasis on learning rational. Both units were very teacher-centered in the power and control criterion. Unit A was only moderate on evaluation/assessment whereas unit B was much better on this criterion. The authors saw their study as a mechanism to help professors assess where they are on learner-centeredness with the goal to improve in the future.

Fornaciari et al. (2013) argued that an effective syllabus should be based on principles for adult learning (Knowles 1977) including: “adults need to know the ‘why’ of learning; adults learn through trial-and-error experience; adults should own their own decisions about learning; adults prefer learning that which is immediately relevant to their lives; adults learn better from problem-based than content-based environments; and adults learn better with intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators” (p.702–703). They identify several different frames for a syllabus: as a contract (i.e. a formal agreement between the student and the institution), as a power instrument (i.e. putting the instructor in control of the course), as a communication or signaling device (i.e. sends expectations of the instructor and what the course is about), and as a collaboration (i.e. that the course is a cooperative venture among students and the instructor.) The authors advocate for the latter frames for a syllabus: communication and collaboration.

Many universities provide syllabus templates to be followed by their faculty in preparing syllabi for their courses. Almost all have the same basic information or categories of information to be provided to the students. Exhibit A is an example of one of the better examples of a syllabus template found on the Internet.

Based on their review of studies of syllabus use, Slattery and Carlson (2005) suggested some specific recommendations for why “a strong syllabus facilitates teaching and learning.”

It communicates … an organized and meaningful journey [through the course] (p.159) . . . the strongest syllabi and courses have assignments that are clearly related to process objectives and that clearly help students meet these goals (p.160) . . . the strongest course goals use action verbs (evaluate, analyze, create) rather than more passive and vague verbs (learn, recognize, understand) (p.161) . . . tell [students] why you give assignments and why they are important (p.162) … [provide] the grading criteria and rubrics used to guide the determination of … grades (p/ 161) . . . are user-friendly and warm (p. 163).

Other guides for designing syllabi include Passman and Green (2009) who emphasize accessibility; Matejka and Kurke (1994) who emphasize building a syllabus around a contract, a communication device, a plan, and a cognitive map; Ludwig et al. (2011) who emphasize building a syllabus as an assessment for learning including: clearly defined and measurable learning objectives prior to instruction, providing usable feedback to the student to ensure prompt guidance and using feedback to improve teaching and learning; Jones (2018) emphasizes design features such as font size, bulleted lists, graphics, tables, etc. They write, “Scholars, researchers, and instructors understand that content in syllabi is important, but that content must be accessible and in a form that encourages the use and makes use easy, rather than stymies students when they need Information” (Future Study and Conclusions section ¶ 1).

First Principles of Instruction

The university’s goal for this project was to assess the degree to which faculty used a problem-centered approach to instruction based on the book, First Principles of Instruction (Merrill 2006, 2007, 2013) and to encourage them to revise their course to be more problem-centered. The principles of instruction, on which the Syllabus Review Form is based, are briefly summarized in the following paragraphs:

Perhaps the most frequently used learning event is to present information or tell. This tell can take many forms including lectures, videos, textbooks, and PowerPoint presentations. Often this tell is followed by an ask learning event which requires learners to remember what they were told, what they read, or what they saw. “Tell-and-ask is one of the least effective instructional strategies” (Merrill 2013, p. 72).

Does the content include examples, demonstrations, or simulations of the ideas being taught? Providing examples of the content being taught is fundamental for effective instruction and engaging instruction. Adding demonstration (show) to a tell-ask instructional strategy will result in a significant increment in the effectiveness of the course. The show-me principle states that “Learning is promoted when learners observe a demonstration of the knowledge and skill to be learned” (Merrill 2013, p.23).

Does the course include the application of the information and skills demonstrated? There are two kinds of application that are most important but too often not included: the first is DOid or DOidentify that requires learners to recognize new divergent examples of an object or event when they encounter it. DOid is also the initial application required when learning the steps of a procedure or process. The learner must first recognize a correctly executed step when they see it and they must also recognize the consequence that resulted from the execution of the step.

The second kind of application is DOex. Once students can recognize appropriate steps and appropriate consequences for these steps then DOex or DOexecute is the next level of application. DOex requires learners to perform or execute the steps of a procedure. (Merrill 2013, See Section Instructional Strategy for a Problem-Solving Event, p. 123). Adding appropriate DOid and DOex application to a tell-show strategy provides another significant increment in the effectiveness, efficiency, and engagement of the instructional strategy. The let-me principle states that “Learning is promoted when learners engage in the application of their newly acquired knowledge or skill” (Merrill 2013, p. 21).

Even after appropriate demonstration and application learning events are added to an instructional strategy there is still a potential problem that keeps this instructional sequence from being as effective, efficient and engaging as possible. In a traditional sequence, topics are usually taught one-on-one. The demonstration (show) and application (DO) learning events added to a tell sequence are usually examples that apply to only a single component skill that is merely a small part of solving a whole problem. Too often learners fail to see the relevance of some of these individual skills learned out of context. We have all experienced the often used explanation, “You won’t understand this now, but later it will be very important to you.” If “later” in this situation is several days or weeks there is a good possibility that the learner will have forgotten the component skill before they get to actually use this skill in solving a whole problem or doing a whole task. Or if learners do not see the relevance of a particular skill they may fail to actually learn the skill or they are unable to identify a mental model into which they can incorporate this skill. Then when it is time to use this skill in the solution of whole problems learners are unable to retrieve the skill because it was merely memorized rather than understood. Furthermore, if solving a whole problem or doing a whole task is the final project for a module or course there may be no opportunity to get feedback and revise the project.

To maximize engagement in learning a new problem-solving skill, learners need to acquire these component skills in the context of the problem they are learning to solve or the task they are learning to complete. If learners are shown an example of the problem they will learn to solve and how to solve this problem, then they are more likely to see the relevance of each individual component skill when it is taught and they will have a framework into which they can incorporate this new skill, greatly increasing the probability of efficient retrieval and application when they are confronted with a new instance of the problem. The problem-centered principle states that “Learning is promoted when learners are engaged in a problem-centered strategy in which component skills are taught in a simple-to-complex progression of whole real-world problems” (Merrill 2013, p. 168).

Method

O'Brian et al. (2008) and Parkes and Harris (2002) emphasized a primary purpose of the syllabus is as a learning tool for the student. An assumption of this project is that the syllabus should be a guide for the student and not only present the requirements of the course but should also provide an overview of the assignments that would be given, the nature of the learning experiences they would participate in, and the nature and content of tests or term papers. When a student finishes a review of the syllabus they should have a very good overview of not only the topics to be covered and the schedule of lectures and due dates for assignments but rather a detailed description of each assignment, how it relates to the topics of the course and the textbook. Consistent with the characteristic of adult learners (Fornaciari et al. 2013) a goal of this project is to promote problem-centered courses that put students in the context of solving real-world problems.

Cullen and Harris (2009) used a review of the syllabus to assess the learner-centeredness of the courses. In like manner the challenge in this project was to design a syllabus checklist that could be used to review the syllabi of the faculty to determine the degree to which the syllabus implemented effective instructional strategies as described in the book, First Principles of Instruction, and to provide a set of notes to accompany this checklist that would guide the faculty as they revised their courses to be more consistent with these principles, with the eventual goal of having problem-centered courses.

Many universities provide syllabus templates to be followed by their faculty in preparing syllabi for their courses. Almost all have the same basic information or categories of information to be provided to the students. All provide the mechanics of the course but almost all of them fail to indicate what is required to make the syllabus effective as a guide for student learning.

In Exhibit A bold text indicates those syllabus components that we need to carefully review because it is these components that affect student effectiveness, efficiency and engagement in obtaining the learning objectives of the course. Much of the other information identified is important for the university, for classroom management, for school policies, etc. but have little effect on student learning. This study concentrated on the four areas of the syllabus that relate to First Principles of Instruction and that can make a significant difference in student learning: objectives, schedule, assignments, and the final activity for the course.

The syllabus checklist identifies four levels for each of the instructional components which are the focus of this study. Faculty sometimes fail to include these important components of a syllabus, so a syllabus is inadequate to the extent that objectives, a schedule, assignments, or a final activity are not included. A typical syllabus often consists of remember or ambiguous objectives, a topic-centered schedule, tell-ask activities, and a final paper or test that is primarily remember (ask). A typical syllabus that requires students to merely remember, paraphrase, or re-present information about the topics of the course, does not prepare students to solve problems in the real world. Assignments that merely require reading or studying or sharing information do not prepare students to solve problems. Consistent with recommendations of Slattery and Carlson (2005) and Merrill (2006) an instructional syllabus recognizes more effective versions of these syllabus components: DOid or DOex objectives, a task-centered syllabus, DOid or DOex assignments consistent with the objectives, and a final test or activity involving DOid or DOex tasks. Based on (Merrill 2013) a problem-centered syllabus consists of problem-centered objectives, a schedule that is built around a progression of problems or tasks, activities that involve solving successive parts of a whole real-world problem or solving a series of progressively more difficult whole real-world problems and a final activity that involves completing a new whole real-world task or problem.

Just because a syllabus identifies problems to be solved or tasks to be completed does not ensure that these tasks will be demonstrated as part of the instruction or that the assignments will require students to actually do these tasks. In the same way just because the objectives fail to identify tasks that will be demonstrated or assignments that will require execution of these required skills does not necessarily mean that the lectures or instructional materials of the course do not contain such demonstrations and applications. However, if the syllabus fails to identify task or problem-centered objectives and assignments, it is much more likely that the course materials and presentations will also fail to provide adequate demonstration or application of the skills to be acquired.

The Syllabus Review Checklist

During the first year of this project, the author consulted with the faculty to discuss and review their courses to determine if they were problem-centered. The president and provost of the university requested that the author review the syllabi of all the faculty to provide more consistent feedback. The checklist described in this paper evolved as the author reviewed more and more syllabi. His reviews started as detailed comments on a given syllabus with suggestions for improving the syllabus and the course. The checklist evolved to provide more complete and consistent comments in these reviews. The checklist as presented here was the final iteration of the checklist and was used for his reviews toward the end of the project.

This checklist has not been submitted to a reliability test. The author developed the checklist to facilitate his own review of faculty syllabi. A set of notes accompanied the completed checklist when a review of their syllabus was submitted to faculty with the intent of helping them interpret the review and revise their course. This set of notes should also help improve the reliability of the checklist when used by faculty to review their own syllabi. When this checklist is used by others it would be desirable to determine inter-rater reliability. The intent of this paper was to present this checklist with the hope that it might become valuable to faculty and others who wish to review their syllabi to determine to what extent they implement the principles advocated by First Principles of Instruction.

Exhibit B Is the Syllabus Review Checklist

It was designed to help faculty review their own syllabus and course with the goal of revising their course to more adequately implement the principles described in First Principles of Instruction and ultimately to provide a problem-centered course. For the syllabus under review, the reviewer checks one box corresponding to the best description for each of the four categories. The following paragraphs are the notes that accompany the checklist and elaborate on each of the values in each category.

Objectives

Remember or Ambiguous Objectives

The objectives most often seen in syllabi require students to merely remember the content. These objectives often use verbs like: define, describe, identify, label, list, recall, state. Merely remembering content does not transfer to using this content or the ability to solve problems. Remember-objectives may be important prerequisite information but only when used in conjunction with DOid or DOex objectives. Syllabi often include ambiguous verbs like appreciate, understand, comprehend. What does a student do when they understand, appreciate or comprehend? These words are too general for effective objectives. More specific action verbs should be used instead.

DOid and DOex Objectives

There are two primary categories of skill needed in most content areas: the first is to identify a specific object, activity, or situation as an example of a given class. This involves identifying characteristics of the object, activity or situation. The verb “understanding” often implies this type of skill. This syllabus-review-form uses the abbreviation DOid (DO) for this type of skill.

The second skill needed in most content areas is to perform (execute) some activities to produce a given product or accomplish some goal. This syllabus review form uses the abbreviation DOex (DOexecute) for this type of skill. DOid and DOex objectives are much more specific and action-oriented. They indicate to the student what tasks they will be able to do rather than merely remember information.

Problem-Centered Objectives

A problem-centered objective identifies a specific type of task the student will be able to perform or a specific type of problem that the student will be able to solve because of the instruction. The ultimate goal of almost all instruction is to enable learners to acquire skills that enable them to complete complex tasks or solve complex problems. Too often a given course teaches some of the skills required for problem-solving but fails to engage the student in actual task performance or problem-solving activities. Engaging student in real-world problem solving with authentic tasks or problems significantly increases engagement in a course.

Schedule

Topic-Schedule

Many courses are organized by topics per week. Typically, the lecture, discussion plus the reading assignment is listed for each week. Sometimes the schedule identifies other learning activity assignments by the week they are due; if there is a term paper or other overall activity its due date is listed in the schedule; if there is a midterm and final exam they are shown in the schedule. A topic-centered schedule does little to provide an overview or guidance to the course.

Task-Centered Schedule

When the course objectives identify DOid or DOex tasks, a more effective content-centered schedule is to organize the course around a series of modules each of which includes tell, show, and do learning events. A tell event provides information about a task and indicates the steps and conditions required to execute the task, a show event demonstrates the solution of one or more task examples, and a do event requires the student to apply the information, steps, and conditions to compete one or more new examples of the task.

Problem-Progression Schedule

An effective problem-progression schedule consists of a series of modules that: (1) use tell, show, do learning events to teach each of the component skills required to solve the problem or (2) use tell, show, do learning events to demonstrate and have learners complete a progression of problem instances.

Assignments

Tell-Ask Activities

In many typical syllabi tell-ask learning events are indicated as assignments. The most obvious is to read chapters of the text or other materials; a popular tell-ask event is to assign chapters to different students and have them present the content to the class; another popular tell-ask event is to have students do a research project on the content of the course and present their report to the class. These study learning events may be helpful in providing tell and sometimes show learning events, but they often fail to provide an opportunity for students to apply the information or skills that are described in the materials studied.

DOid or DOex Task Assignments

Instruction is much more effective, efficient and engaging when the objectives identify DOid or DOex tasks and when the schedule then includes the opportunity to actually do these tasks as part of the module for each task. The module should do more than merely list the DO assignment but should be very specific in indicating the instances of the task that will be demonstrated and the instances of the task that the student will be required to execute in each of the modules.

Whole Problem Task

Instruction is most effective and engaging when the modules include: (1) the opportunity for students to see a demonstration for how to solve each part of an instance of the problem and then have the opportunity to solve the part of another instance of the problem or (2) in early modules to see a demonstration of the solution for an instance of the whole problem and then in subsequent modules have an opportunity to solve new instances of the whole problem.

Final Activity

Final Experience or Test

In addition to a final test, a typical final experience is to have students write a term paper based on some aspect of the content of the course. While in some courses this final experience might be a problem-solving experience, in most typical courses it is merely a summary of some aspects of the content of the course. Other final experiences might be some other learning activity that could be problem solving but is most often merely another experience remembering and telling the content of the course. These final experiences rarely enable learners to acquire problem-solving skills related to the content of the course. Many courses leave the acquisition of such skill to later experiences where the content of the course may be relevant.

Objective-Centered Tasks

When the objectives of the course identify several DOid or DOex skills that are not necessarily connected as part of a larger problem-centered task, then an appropriate final experience or final exam is to have learners apply the skills they have acquired to additional instances of one or more of the tasks taught in the course. Unfortunately, when these skills are not organized around the solution of a more complex problem or task the learners may not recognize these skills when they occur in the context of a larger problem.

New Problem-Solving Task

When the modules of the course have demonstrated and enabled learners to do component skills that are part of a more complex problem then the final experience in the course should be a new instance of the problem which requires learners to execute all the component skills for this whole new problem instance. When the modules of the course have demonstrated and enable learners to solve an increasingly complex progression of instances of the problem then the final experience should be yet another instance of the whole problem for them to solve. The final experience for problem-centered courses may be an assignment that requires significant time (more than a few hours) to complete.

Sample Syllabi

Exhibits C, D, and E are actual university syllabi. Exhibit C is a typical syllabus for a course in Ethics and Leadership; Exhibit D is an instructional syllabus for a course in Descriptive and Illustrative Drawing; Exhibit E is a problem-centered course in Fundamentals of Marketing. Except for course titles, these syllabi have been redacted to protect the identity of the faculty involved. The components of a syllabus that guide the student and promotes learning are the goals or objectives, the schedule of learning activities, the assignments, and the final activity that demonstrates what the student has learned. These syllabi include only information about objectives, schedule, assignments, and the final activity for the course. While course information, procedures, and university requirements such as rules for cheating, attendance, disabilities, etc. are important, these components have been redacted from the attached syllabi. A completed Syllabus Review Checklist follows each syllabus.

Findings

The author reviewed 129 syllabi representing courses taught by 52 different faculty members. The syllabi represented most of the courses taught at the university including all levels of the curriculum: 56 lower division courses (100 and 200), 60 upper division courses (300 and 400) and 13 graduate courses (700–900). To provide more consistent data, the author used the final version of the checklist to do a second review of each of the 129 syllabi in preparation for this report. The data presented here are based on this second review of each syllabus.

Figure 1 plots the total score for each of the syllabi reviewed. A score 0–2 is an inadequate syllabus, N = 7; score 3–6 (light gray rectangle) is a traditional syllabus, N = 82; score 7–10 (medium gray rectangle) is an instructional syllabus, N = 27; score 11–12 (dark gray rectangle) is a problem-centered syllabus, N = 13.

The mean total score for the 56 lower division courses is 7.16 (SD 2.60), for the 60 upper division classes is 5.53 (SD 2.80), for the 13 graduate courses is 6.30 (SD 2.81). There is no significant statistical difference between these three groups.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Syllabus review scores

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Discussion

Even in an environment in which a problem-centered approach to the curriculum was being stressed, most faculty still prepared a very traditional syllabus. Some of those who prepared an instructional syllabus indicated that they were attempting to implement First Principles of Instruction. All of those who prepared a problem-centered syllabus acknowledged that they were trying to implement First Principles of Instruction. One faculty member, who completed the author’s online course on First Principles of Instruction, was the leader of three faculty teams who prepared three of these problem-centered courses. His team members were each responsible for preparing four additional problem-centered syllabi. Together these 4 individuals account for 7 of the 13 problem-centered syllabi. Several faculty members prepared a syllabus in the winter semester and then had an opportunity to revise their syllabus for review in the fall semester. Their revised syllabus, which more adequately implemented the principles from First Principles of Instruction, were included in this analysis rather than their first submission.

An important question is whether the syllabus reflects what is actually done in the course? A course with a traditional syllabus may still provide a problem-centered experience that is just not described in the syllabus. The university required the professors to implement their courses using Canvas, a learning management system. The author reviewed some of these Canvas implementations to determine how well the syllabi were being implemented. In every Canvas implementation that the author reviewed there was a very close correspondence between the syllabus and the Canvas implementation. A traditional syllabus resulted in a very minimal implementation in Canvas, whereas the problem-centered syllabi resulted in very complete implementations of the course. None of the Canvas implementations reviewed exceeded what was specified in the syllabus. Unfortunately, this review of the Canvas implantations was not systematic or consistent enough to allow a correlation analysis of this correspondence.

The principles incorporated into the syllabus check-list have been studied and validated but never in the context of a syllabus (Merrill 2007, 2013). While the findings of this activity are suggestive they do not answer the important question proposed by this paper: Can a syllabus be designed that does promote effective, efficient and engaging instruction? There was not an opportunity to collect performance data in the current study and to correlate it with the different levels of syllabi. More research is needed to determine the effect of instructional and problem-centered syllabi on student performance.

What is the value of the syllabus review check-list? If it can be demonstrated that an instructional syllabus promotes a course that results in more effective, efficient and engaging student learning, and if a problem-centered syllabus facilitates a course that results in students being better able to solve problems, then the syllabus review check-list may be an important tool that can be used by faculty to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and engagement of their courses. It is hoped that this report provides a starting place and the first attempt at a tool that leads to further study of the important role that a syllabus can play in providing better instruction and learning.

Summary

An effective syllabus should be a guide to the student and not only present the requirements of the course – text, topics, schedule – but should also provide an overview of the assignments that would be given, the nature of the learning experiences they would participate in, the nature and content of tests or term papers. When a student finishes a review of the syllabus they should have a very good overview of not only the topics to be covered and the schedule of lectures and due dates for assignments but rather a detailed description of each assignment, how it relates to the topics of the course and the textbook. However, a list of these items is insufficient.

For example, it is not sufficient to merely have objectives or outcomes for the course, but these objectives must reflect skills that demonstrate the ability to complete tasks or solve problems, merely remembering, paraphrasing, presenting information about the topics of the course do not prepare students to solve problems in the real world. Also, assignments that merely require reading or studying or sharing information do not prepare students to solve problems. The objectives should identify real-world tasks to be completed or real-world problems to be solved and the assignments should then correspond to these objectives. It is not sufficient to have a good problem-centered objective and then never have an assignment that requires the student to acquire and demonstrate the skill identified.

The prescriptions for effective, efficient and engaging instruction as described and illustrated in First Principles of Instruction (Merrill 2013) were applied to the development of the checklist for the adequacy of a syllabus. This syllabus review checklist and its annotation are designed to help faculty members examine their own syllabi or the syllabi of others to determine the potential of the course in providing effective, efficient and engaging instruction based on First Principles of Instruction. The paper emphasizes four areas of the syllabus – objectives, schedule, assignments, and the final activity of the course and demonstrates the characteristics of these syllabus components that represent typical syllabi, more effective instructional syllabi, and most effective problem-centered syllabi.

A typical syllabus often includes remember or ambiguous objectives, a topic centered schedule, tell-ask learning assignments and a final experience or test. Tell learning assignments can take many forms including lectures, videos, textbooks, PowerPoint presentations. Ask learning assignments require learners to remember what they were told, what they read, or what they saw. The final experience or test often emphasizes remembering rather than problem solving.

An instructional syllabus includes DO-identify or DO-execute objectives, a task-centered schedule, DOid or DOex assignments, and a final activity that required completing DOid or DOex tasks. DOid assignments require learners to identify unencountered instances of some object or event. DOex assignments require learners to execute the steps in a procedure or observe the steps in a process.

A problem-centered syllabus includes problem-centered objectives, a problem-progression schedule, assignments involving solving whole problems or doing whole tasks, and a final activity requiring a doing new whole task or solving a new whole problem. A problem-progression schedule involves demonstrating and solving a sequence of increasingly complex problems or tasks or demonstrating and solving component parts of a more complex task or problem.

The author used this syllabus check-list to review syllabi for courses in an international American university. Most of the syllabi were traditional, there were some that were instructional and a handful that were problem-centered and were prepared by faculty that that applied First Principles of Instruction.