{"id":29,"date":"2013-07-01T10:44:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T14:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/?p=29"},"modified":"2020-01-09T12:23:38","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T17:23:38","slug":"syllabus-tone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/2013\/07\/01\/syllabus-tone\/","title":{"rendered":"Syllabus Tone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many factors influence student perceptions of their instructors such as gender, likability, formality of dress and also one that the professors can manipulate, the tone of the syllabus. A study conducted by Richard Harnish and Robert Bridges found that when students read the syllabus written in a warm, friendly tone the perception of the professor was that he was &#8220;more warm, more approachable and more motivated to teach the course&#8221; (2011). Other studies suggest that positive initial perceptions like this make for a better learning climate for more effective teaching and learning.<\/p>\n<p>According to Harnish et al. (2011) some characteristic of a positive or friendly syllabus tone are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Using positive or friendly language;<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Providing a rationale for assignments;<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Sharing personal experiences;<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Using humor;<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Conveying compassion;<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Showing enthusiasm for the course.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For specific examples of both friendly and unfriendly syllabus tones, please see the full article.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Harnish, R. J., &amp; Bridges, K. R. (2011). Effect of syllabus tone: Students&#8217; perceptions of instructor and course. Social Psychology of Education 14(3), 319-330. doi: 10.1007\/s11218-011-9152-4<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Harnish, R. J., O\u2019Brien McElwee, R., Slattery, J. M., Frantz, S., Haney, M. R., Shore, C. M., &amp; Penley, J. (2011). Creating the foundation for a warm classroom climate: Best practices in syllabus tone. APS Observer, 24, 23\u201327.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many factors influence student perceptions of their instructors such as gender, likability, formality of dress and also one that the professors can manipulate, the tone of the syllabus. A study conducted by Richard Harnish and Robert Bridges found that when students read the syllabus written in a warm, friendly tone the perception of the professor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1416,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/1416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/faculty-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}