By Chase Barclay & Jax Nalley
Duke Student Government Academic Affairs Committee
Duke Student Government is excited to offer our Syllabus Bank platform for its second consecutive semester this fall. The Syllabus Bank is an online repository that enables students and faculty across the university to access syllabi for undergraduate courses. For years, this type of access hasn’t been offered to all students equally, with many selective student organizations having maintained their own internal repositories only available to members. Under the old system, only some students had the advantage of viewing syllabi, with historically marginalized populations often being disadvantaged in their educational access on campus year after year. Many of our peer institutions (Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale) have recognized this and implemented their own versions of a Syllabus Bank to both combat this clear inequity and enhance the experiences of undergraduate students and faculty on their campuses.
Since launching our pilot in Fall 2021 in partnership with several departments, the Registrar’s Office, and Undergraduate Education Leaders, over 1,200 syllabi have been uploaded to the Syllabus Bank, which were made widely available during our full launch last semester. While we are impressed by the warm welcome many have given the Syllabus Bank, we need higher participation in order to truly accomplish our goal of breaking down barriers for students when crafting their Duke experience.
Ultimately, this initiative will not succeed without your contribution and partnership, so we are writing today with a request:
We hope you will consider uploading your Fall 2022 syllabi (and those from previous semesters, if you are willing!) before Friday, August 26th, as the student body will begin heavily utilizing the Syllabus Bank starting Monday, August 29th, in line with the start of classes and the add/drop period for Fall 2022.
Benefits
We know that your to-do list is already packed, so you may be wondering: “what’s in it for me?” Here are just a few benefits that participating faculty report:
- Identifying adjacent courses, or courses on related topics, across departments
- Gaining general familiarity with courses offered by colleagues, which may prove particularly useful for newer faculty members
- Discovering useful language to inform your own syllabi, such as class attendance or participation policy, assignment structure, etc.
- Consulting syllabi of prior version(s) of a course if you take over responsibility for said course.
Protecting Your Syllabi
We know that course syllabi represent your unique body of work, the result of years of academic specialization, and unique research. As such, we take the security of these documents within our system very seriously to prevent unauthorized sharing. A variety of measures are in place to ensure the integrity of your syllabi:
- Only members of the Duke community with a valid Shibboleth login (NetID & password) can access class syllabi.
- All users of the Syllabus Bank must agree to an Acceptable Use Policy before accessing it, which explicitly outlines prohibited actions relating to the Syllabus Bank and details that any violation of this policy, or other institutional policies such as the Duke Community Standard, can lead to disciplinary action with the Office of Student Conduct & Community Standards.
Steps to Upload
- First, go to the Simple Syllabus website (Duke.SimpleSyllabus.com) and log in using your NetID credentials.
- Upon logging in, notice the three different tabs across the top: Dashboard, Published, and Syllabus Library.
- The default page, the Dashboard tab, lists all the courses you have taught during the aforementioned terms.
- To upload a syllabus, click on the pencil icon next to the class of interest.
- NOTE: At this time, we are not seeking syllabi for graduate courses.
Importantly, DUS Assistants also can upload syllabi for all classes within their respective departments, if your department already collects syllabi centrally. Should your DUSA not have access, please have them email syllabi@duke.edu.
Feel free to reach out to syllabi@duke.edu with any questions or concerns and visit this website to see further details, video tutorials, and an in-depth FAQ. Thank you so much, in advance, for uploading to the Syllabus Bank and supporting this vital Undergraduate Education initiative.