Engaging Students with a Syllabus Scavenger Hunt: Active Learning for the First Day

The syllabus serves as a cornerstone of any higher education course. Even Snoop Dogg recognizes the significance of a syllabus for student success. Fortunately, active learning can be extended to the syllabus. Regardless of whether your syllabus is your creation or the standard version from your department or school, the idea of students "discovering" course information is an easy way to incorporate active learning into the first day of class. Here’s how a syllabus scavenger hunt can transform a potentially tedious task into an engaging and informative experience.

Why Create an Active Learning Syllabus Activity?

A syllabus essentially has two functions:

Serve as a contract between students and faculty about course expectations.
Motivate, encourage, and give an inspirational roadmap of the course.

While the nuts and bolts of a syllabus are important, this article will focus on providing these expectations with a learner-centered, positive approach that can significantly impact students’ perception of a course.

Common Pitfalls of Syllabus Review

Starting a class with a long list of policies and potential penalties can leave students disconnected from their motivations for being in the class. Many instructors are guilty of starting a class by introducing themselves, reviewing the rules (including all of the penalties), and emphasizing how hard students will need to work to succeed.

An Alternative: Engaging with the Syllabus in a Positive Light

What if, instead, we allowed students to engage with the syllabus in a positive light, setting the stage for success, building student confidence, and helping them to connect their "why?" This idea is an essential piece that is often missing from the first day of class. As educators, we can help students connect their meaning and purpose with the classroom content and their ultimate success.

A syllabus scavenger hunt is an active learning technique that can help connect the course and the student’s goals. It’s not a game, however. Instead, we are using the familiar concept of the scavenger hunt to allow students to discover and make connections independently.

How to Implement an Active Learning Syllabus

This activity is best for small groups and is an excellent way to get students talking among themselves. In addition, the open-ended format allows students to write their interpretation of the formal language of the syllabus. Finally, the worksheet can be used as a reference to locate the answers to common questions quickly. Students can easily indicate on the worksheet the answer’s page number for easy reference.

Utilizing an active learning syllabus is an excellent way for students to practice using their filters. Being involved in patient care involves filtering through large volumes of information and choosing what will be most important. Allowing students to practice this on the first day of a course sets the expectation that concise synopsis is an expectation and a clear success strategy.

Variations for Implementing a Syllabus Scavenger Hunt:

Here are some variations to make the scavenger hunt even more engaging:

In-Person Option: When doing the large group debriefing, have the student groups/group leader come to the front of the class to present. By including this step, you set the expectation that movement is a part of the class and that passively sitting through a lecture is not the MO for your class period.
Humor: Include a pinch of humor in the questions. For example, add a question about their favorite Disney princess or how they drink their coffee. These questions decrease the intimidating formality of the first day of class and serve to build a student community.
Grading: Make this an assignment in your grade book and give everyone 100% for participating. Starting class off with a win can make less confident students feel capable.
Virtual Option: If you are teaching an online course, you can create an active learning syllabus using tips from Natasha Nurse-Clark. Check out her post on how to make an online syllabus more interactive.

Who is this activity best for?

You can use this activity to open any active learning classroom at the start of the term. It can be a gentle introduction to an active learning environment in theory, clinical, or an online course. If you are looking for a simple way to get students acclimated to your active learning classroom, or you need to add some pizzazz to the first class session, a syllabus scavenger hunt is an answer. This activity is quick to implement, does not require an entire syllabus re-do, and can be modified to fit any course. Just download the template, adjust it to fit your course content, and you are ready to start your class with an active learning syllabus review!

Read also: Software for Syllabus Management

Building a Syllabus Scavenger Hunt

A typical syllabus can be bland and boring. You can help students connect the course content with their nursing goals by implementing this simple activity to help them discover the information independently. It’s not always the most fun part of the first day of class, but we often need to review the syllabus. Students need to know the rules, how their grades will be calculated, and the outline of the course. If you don’t go over it in class, they won’t read it on their own. Even if they do review it on their own, they may have questions! But if you lecture at them, they tend to get bored, get distracted, and forget. If you pep up your syllabus review with jokes and personal stories, they remember those stories forever. Not so much the important stuff. This is why I love the Syllabus Scavenger Hunt!

I don’t think anything engages the brain and helps students memorize more than making them do the work, and making it fun. A Syllabus Scavenger Hunt does just that! Instead of reading the syllabus and having students follow along, maybe interrupt with questions that you were about to answer anyway, in a Syllabus Scavenger Hunt, you hand out the syllabus and a sheet of questions. You might also format your questions as unfinished notes. Be sure the questions highlight the most important information students need to know about your class.

Key Information to Include in Your Scavenger Hunt:

Typically students need to know:

How their grade is calculated
Due dates for large projects
Dates of exams or big tests
Lateness, absence, and sickness policies
Any unique expectations for your class

You may also think about questions you’ve gotten in the past or situations that commonly occur. When I used to teach a class first thing in the morning, students would often be a few minutes late. So I was sure to set a clear policy on how late was late and I added that to my syllabus. There were also questions about whether they could eat and drink in class. I had to institute some rules because kids were bringing in greasy egg sandwiches or claiming they couldn’t take notes while they ate! Another IEP I worked at had a lot of Saudi Arabian students. There were always questions about Ramadan: Is Eid an excused absence? Can we ask other students not to eat or drink in class during Ramadan?

You can also Google “syllabus scavenger hunt” to find examples and get ideas. I particularly like this one, this one, and this post with example questions as well as tips.

Read also: Understanding the GATE Syllabus

How to Run the Scavenger Hunt

Students then read the syllabus and fill in the answers themselves. Because they are doing the work themselves, they are more likely to be engaged and to remember. And when they are done, they will have a cheat sheet to your syllabus, a one-page summary with the most important information clearly marked (It may seem a bit crazy that students need this, but remember, they are language learners. Some syllabuses get pretty dense with all that text, and boilerplate language from the administration).

Variations on the Syllabus Scavenger Hunt

As an alternative, you can put students in groups to work together and help each other. This is particularly good for lower-levels or very dense multi-page syllabuses (I’m looking at you, university classes). You can even assign each student one question and then put them in groups to tell each other the answers. You could make it a relay race, where students must run across the classroom to get each new question. Or even turn it into a timed race and see which student or group can answer all the questions first.

However you run the Syllabus Scavenger Hunt, be sure to go over the answers and make sure everyone is on the same page. And be sure to take questions after. Hopefully at this point the questions will be things NOT on the syllabus already. And if a student does ask a question such as, “What if I get sick while I’m on vacation, but the vacation wasn’t an excused absence, and the next day is the first day of spring break?” they have a place to jot down the answer.

Additional Syllabus Activities to Consider:

Going over the syllabus isn’t exactly the most thrilling part of the back-to-school season. But it is important. Students need to know how your class works, what you expect, and how to succeed. The good news? A syllabus activity doesn’t have to be boring.

Syllabus Bingo: This is my favorite go-to syllabus activity for the first week of school. You can give a small prize for the first students to get bingo, or challenge the class to get a blackout before the end of the period. It’s low-pressure and keeps students engaged while reviewing key information. You can even use it as an icebreaker activity and have students compete in teams.
Syllabus Stations: Want to add movement and a bit more energy to your first day? Print key sections of your syllabus and post them around the room. This format is especially great for your afternoon classes that need a little break from sitting on the first day.
Digital Quiz Game: If your students have access to laptops or devices, turn your syllabus into a fun and fast-paced quiz game using Kahoot or Quizizz. Create a 10-15 question quiz based on your syllabus. You can play as a whole class and display the leaderboard to keep students engaged, or assign the quiz as an asynchronous activity for homework or stations.
Two Truths and a Lie: Put a fun twist on a classic icebreaker. Share three statements about your syllabus - two true and one false. Students have to dig into the syllabus to back up their answer.
Team Challenge: Divide the class into 4-5 teams. Each team starts with a set number of points. You can play with a standard whiteboard setup or add a physical component like shooting a ball into a trash can for extra points (aka Trashketball style).

Benefits of a Syllabus Scavenger Hunt

My favorite part of this activity is that it draws student attention to parts of the syllabus they may otherwise ignore, and it provides students with an opportunity to ask questions. This is ready to print and use! I also keep these documents in case a student later questions or challenges a policy; this provides some evidence that they have read the syllabus before. This becomes a good management and reflection tool.

tags: #syllabus #scavenger #hunt #ideas