The syllabus for one of my courses is a single page in lenth, in fourteen point font, with a couple of sentences bolded, the theory being that if it is short, snappy, and easy to read, students will actually read it. Maybe once, some long ago semester, someone did. Here is an excerpt from that syllabus, which I distribute at the beginning of the semester in paper form, and place online:
GRADING: Your grade in this course will be based on an anonymously graded final examination. The final examination will be”open book,”and you may bring any written or printed materials you like to the exam, including commercial hornbooks or treatises and group outlines. It will consist of a combination of short answer and essay questions.
Here is a question I fielded no fewer than thirty-three (33) times last week about the [open book, as announced in the syllabus and several times in class] final examination I administered yesterday: “Will the exam be ‘open book’?” [Bonus question: Can you guess what my enrollment was?] I’m thinking I should announce that the contents of the syllabus itself constitute “testable material,” and begin asking, in the short answer section of my “open book” final, whether or not the final is open book. Here are some other questions that arose as I was collecting exam answers (yes, I do this myself, South Carolina is very much a do-it-yourself kind of law school):
-Will you take off points if I didn’t answer one of the questions?
-Will I lose credit for not stapling the pages of my answer together?
-Do you think you will have this graded by tomorrow afternoon?
Also, someone spilled suntan lotion all over her or his bluebooks, no I am not making this up, so my grading has distinct coconut scented overtones. My students are generally very smart, concientious and hardworking people. There is just something about final exams that temporarily paralyzes the “common sense” lobes of their brains.
–Ann Bartow
a couple of semesters ago, a friend of mine who is a professor announced a new policy of deducting points from the final grade for any student who asks a question that can be answered by reading the syllabus. she said it has cut WAY down on the phenomenon you are describing!