The Anti-Syllabus as a Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Approach to Online Instruction

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Online Learning (Table 22)

Abstract

Syllabi are designed to communicate expectations for course assignments, tasks, policies, and more. As Pancasky-Brock et al. (2020) posit, students’ expectations and experiences of an online course can be shaped by the syllabus and may even cause heightened learner anxiety (Pancasky-Brock et al., 2020). In this session, we contend that through culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy, faculty can reconceptualize the role of the course syllabus. This paper highlights lessons learned from the implementation of the “anti-syllabus,” a dynamic liquid syllabus template created and implemented across online graduate and undergraduate courses as a culturally responsive-sustaining tool for online teaching.

Authors

• Taryrn T.C. Brown, University of Florida

• Lindsey A. Chapman, Boston University

• Tara Mathien, University of Florida

• Vivian Gonsalves, University of Florida