Toward Reshaping the Syllabus for Education at Scale

Abstract

Ensuring that students are fully informed about course content and policies is always a challenge, but online education at scale adds additional complications. In this paper we present observations about the place of the syllabus in education at scale, based on the actual syllabus documents from 48 courses in a Computer Science Master's degree program offered online and at scale. On the basis of these observations, we offer preliminary recommendations for factors that instructors should keep in mind when they compile a syllabus for similar courses.