Syllabus Can Make or Break First Impressions

On the first day of school, teachers usually pass out and go over the course syllabus. Therefore, after the classroom environment and the appearance of the teacher, the syllabus is one of the first impressions that students use to formulate their first impressions of the class. Of course we spend time making our classroom (or computer lab in my case) look professional as well as our personal appearace but how often do we spend time making our syllabus look good? Students don't want to just see pages of text about the class...they want to see visual representations to assist the test. Therefore, this year I spent extra time on my four page syllabus which I sent to them and had them print out and bring to class. Most printed in color which saved my printing cost.