Legislature: syllabi must be online by fall 2010

The Texas Legislature has given professors at public colleges and universities a little extra homework due by next fall semester.

The ACC administration is currently working on a way to implement a new rule that requires the college to post on the web a course syllabus for every credit class offered. The syllabi must be no more than three clicks from the school's main Web page, and they must be viewable by anyone interested, not just students enrolled in the college.

The rule comes from House Bill 2504 passed in the Texas Legislature earlier this year. The bill states that each syllabus must include a list of all required and recommended reading, a brief description of course requirements, a brief synopsis of the subject matter of each lecture or discussion and a curriculum vitae for each instructor that lists where the instructor went to school, and any major publications.

The bill also requires that colleges and universities conduct end-of-course evaluations of professors, which ACC already does, and then "develop a plan to make evaluations available on the institution's website." The bill only requires schools to develop a plan, but does not oblige the schools to actually post the evaluations.

"We began an initial internal discussion," said Michael Midgley, ACC Vice President and Interim Provost, of how the ACC administration will deal with the new requirements. "We haven't finalized the exact committee structure yet, but we will do that and probably by the end of the semester we'll have our plan in place."

The deadline to have the syllabi online had originally been Jan. 1, but the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has pushed back the implementation date to the start of the fall, 2010 semester.

Midgley said that this early in the planning process he was unsure if any new hires would be necessary to deal with the added work. "We just don't know at this point how extensive it will be."

Midgley added that he hoped that the added "benefit of better information for students, better accessibility to information, better decisions on the parts of students and others, [would balance out] against the increased workload, not just for the faculty members but for other members, other parts of the institution."

Kathleen Christensen, Vice President of Student Support and Success Systems said that all the information the state is requiring is already available in some format, but by putting it online that information would be more readily available.

"I think particularly the syllabi will help guide students in understanding what the requirements are for a course and making decisions," said Christensen.