Abstract
Most existing literature on college students’ use of the course syllabus has been conducted in artificial settings, collected a limited range of data, or both. This study addresses this gap in the literature with a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with students at a community college about how they interact with a syllabus from one of their current classes. We find that most students report reading at least part of the syllabus, most often the calendar and information on grading. Students are most likely to read information specific to the class and are least likely to read general college information or information they believe they already know. The length of the syllabus is explicitly cited as a reason students do not read the entire document. We recommend that instructors and institutions prioritize the information that students find most helpful and re-evaluate what other sections must be included in the syllabus.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Pliego, Diego and Kaplan, Abby
(2025)
"Community College Students' Experiences with the Syllabus: A Qualitative Study,"
International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning:
Vol. 19:
No.
2, Article 10.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2025.190210
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