COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SYLLABUS STRUCTURE IN LATIN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES

The syllabus is a document designed by a teacher, usually based on a format or model from an institution. This document sets out student learning outcomes, how they will be achieved and how they will be assessed. It also includes materials or resources for subjects, class schedules, student's behavior during lectures, professor contact information and more. Besides, teachers can use syllabus to transmit an encourage students to autonomously explore a discipline. Preferably, this document should be public for transparency. According another researches, a syllabuses has three main purposes: to become a contract between the teacher and the student, to be a permanent record and to be used as a learning tool. The syllabus is a kind of contract between the teacher and students as it determines the responsibility between both parties. The syllabus as a record document allows to materialize what is taught in a course or lecture. The syllabus as a learning tool provides information that helps students build their own knowledge inside or outside the classroom by encouraging self-learning. Given the importance of the syllabus for students, teachers and educational institutions, the following work makes a comparative study of the structure of the syllabuses in Latin American universities. The aim of this study is to investigate to what extent institutional syllabus follows its three substantial functions. Furthermore, this study also finds out how syllabuses are developed and shared within the educational community. For this work, a sample of ten universities was obtained and the structure of their syllabus structures were analyzed and compared. A questionnaire based on the purposes of the syllabuses was applied; with the questionnaire and through direct observation, a group of experts evaluated the syllabuses. The correspondence of their findings was measured with the Cohen's kappa coefficient. Most universities conceive the syllabus as a record document. Information about the number of credits, prerequisites, objectives, schedules and contents are easily found. This is not the case when analyzing the syllabus as a contract between the teacher and the student. Not all universities request that syllabus should explain policies for attendance, qualification policies, or support for students with disabilities. As for the syllabus as a learning tool, some universities underestimate this function. Finally, few universities publish their syllabuses on the web. The majority of universities have their syllabuses in pdf o word documents format. This avoids the information to be properly shared and processed by computers.