Students may soon be able to get a glimpse into their future course load before classes start, thanks to one Student Government initiative. This new syllabus database will let students look up syllabi for classes before adding them to their schedules.
Speaker pro tempore Andrew Mullet unveiled the new service at Wednesday’s Student Senate meeting. The database, which came from a resolution passed in fall 2014, will allow students to compare syllabi for possible classes before they register.
“We sat down with then-provost Stuart Bell and then-vice provost Dr. [Gil] Reeve … We talked with the registrar, with IT, and they’ve been building the database and figuring out how it’s going to work,” Mullet said.
Although the database itself has already been created, SG is still working with faculty to obtain syllabi to populate it.
Everyone who currently has a myLSU account, including students, faculty and certain University administrators, will be able to access the database when it is launched. Students will be able to search for syllabi through the course abbreviation or number, instructor’s name, section number and the year the course was offered.
Mullet said one thing to note would be that syllabi from the current semester would not be available on the database, only those from the past four semesters. Professors would be able to upload a current syllabus, but it would only become available to students after the semester has passed.
This database was modelled after syllabus databases from different universities, including the University of Georgia.
“It’s a matter of institutional pride,” Mullet said. “By having a central place … to see the breadth of all the courses that are offered at the University should serve as a matter of pride for us.”
Although this service would not be mandatory for professors to use, SG said they will be highly encouraged to upload their syllabi. Only faculty will be able to upload documents on the site, so the database will hopefully serve as a place for students to find information they know is correct instead of relying on note-sharing websites that may or may not contain reliable information about a class.
SG chief of staff and former senator Kat Latham, one of the original authors of the Senate resolution, said the service has been a long time in the making. Neither Latham nor the other authors will be able to actually use the database because they will have graduated by the time the service is available.
“We always heard students talking about how they wished they could see the syllabus for a class before they decided to take the class,” Latham said. “We hoped by creating a database students would have a better understanding of certain classes than just in the General Catalog.”