Non-Law Prof’s Experiment Proves that Students Do Not Read Syllabi

According to this story on CNN, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga Professor Kenyon Wilson hid a hint in his syllabus that could have led students to a $50 note hidden in a locker.  Mind you, the hint was so cryptic, even an attentive student might have dismissed it as a botched cut at paste job:  According to CNN, the hint read: “Thus (free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five), students may be ineligible to make up classes and …”  I suspect that one could safely place something more explicit in the syllabus and achieve more clarity about what students do and do not read. 

One reason students don’t read syllabi is that accrediting bodies and university administrations require that we lard our syllabi with general verbiage that I cut and paste with each new semester but that even I do not read.   Like most situations in which people do not read long documents, the decision not to read is wholly rational.  My 2005 contracts syllabus was a svelt five pages.  My 2021 version is a zaftig twelve.  What is gained in those extra seven pages?  Less than zero.  Because students know that they don’t need to read most of my syllabus, they don’t read the parts that matter with much care, and so I have to remind them of: my attendance policy, my office hours, what happens if they turn in assignments late, and the structure of the final exam.  

Professor Wilson could do a more granulated study.  Use clear language: “I have left a $50 bill in locker hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five.  The first student to read this and open the locker can keep the $50.”  Make that language Student Learning Objective #4, and then you will know how much students care about SLOs.   Put it in the middle of the boilerplate about university policies or the boilerplate about law school policies or in the boilerplate about AALS/ABA requirements, and you will know how much students care about that.  And then we will have useful information about what information can and what cannot  be communicated effectively through a syllabus. 

Some information in the syllabus is unimportant to most students but can become suddenly very important to a student who needs, for example, to contact the university disabilities office, or to file an academic complaint.   But a one-line link is all that is needed for those students and it can be found just as easily on a law school or university web page that contains all of the information we now communicate ineffectively on our syllabi.