Providing syllabi far in advance

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

A student from another university is planning on taking a class I'll be teaching this fall and will be doing it as a transient student. Apparently, in order to have their transient status approved, they need a copy of the course syllabus, and so requested it from me by email.

I don't normally finalize my syllabi until a few days before classes start — certainly not five months in advance —, and the course itself is not one that is identical each semester so I don't feel comfortable just sending an old syllabus. (And even that wouldn't exist if it were a new class or a special topics class)

It seems odd to need the syllabi so early — AFAIK the normal process is for his home institution to review the syllabi after taking the classes to determine credit given.

So two parter:

1. Is this a normal request that somehow has just never come by me before?
2. If it is, how do you handle for courses that don't have syllabus ready to go?