Syllabi for all UF courses can now be found on one consolidated Web page, just in time for class registration.
Student Government announced the launch of UF Online Course Syllabi, http://syllabus.ufl.edu/, a one-stop shop for syllabi for every class at UF, on its Facebook page Friday.
Academic Affairs Executive Secretary Seth Mahl said he began this semester with a goal to make classes more transparent and syllabi more accessible.
Instead of creating a pricey new database with syllabi, the 21-year-old UF finance senior created a website categorized by links to each college’s already-existing syllabi database. The website, under UF’s domain, was free and simple to make, Mahl said.
The next step is to make sure the link is prominent on the UF Registrar’s website, he said.
“When students drop a class, no one wins,” Mahl said. “The more knowledge a student has about a class, the more they know and can make a decision.”
Mahl’s idea piggybacked off Associate Provost for Undergraduate Affairs Bernard Mair’s work. At a Faculty Senate meeting during the 2011-2012 school year, Mair proposed each college post class syllabi online to be publicly accessible at either the college or the department level, he said.
Every college took about one year to comply, as some faculty were concerned about infringement on intellectual property. Mair’s proposal also included a syllabus policy change that clarified what material should be posted, he said.
“It’s important for students to be aware of what’s expected,” Mair said.
Associate Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs Angel Kwolek-Folland partnered with Mahl on the syllabus page and mediated with UF Information Technology to create the website.
“It took the work Dr. Mair had done one step farther,” Kwolek-Folland said.
UF plant science junior Danny Ghannoum, 20, said although he hasn’t used the syllabus page yet, he plans to use it for classes in the upcoming Spring semester.
“Most of the time, professors will post their syllabi on Sakai, but sometimes, professors might not update their Sakai e-Learning sites until after classes have started,” he said. “I often like to read about the course and its requirements before the classes have begun.”
A version of this story ran on page 9 on 10/9/2013 under the headline "All-in-one UF course syllabi page opens"
