Scott Warnock in his book, Writing Together, states that an online syllabus should be more detailed and more long than a face to face syllabus.
Since many face to face students are unfamiliar with online classes, online syllabi needs to be longer to provide students details on classroom navigation, and time management for the quizzes, assignments and forum discussions.
Warnock says the more details you give, the better prepared students are to take the online class. Giving students strict day to day timeline of when to do assignments teaches his traditional students the self discipline that it takes to succeed in an online environment.
Many of Warnock's traditional college students are used to the face to face routine of just coming to his class lectures three times a week. Then, doing whatever assignments are on the paper syllabus and then handing in these assignments when they come to class for his class lectures.
In the online syllabus, Warnock finds it useful to tell students where everything in the online class is located, exactly when to take the quiz, and have the quizzes based on the reading to get students to do the reading just like in a face to face class.
However, Aaron Johnson in his book, Excellent! Online Teaching, Effective Strategies For A Successful Semester Online, states that it is much better to have concise instructions and get straight to the point rather than overload students with too many details because instructions with too many details will overwhelm the student especially if you have mainly non-traditional adult students.
Perhaps, for traditional students used to a face to face environment the longer online syllabus is better while for the non-traditional adult students who is busy with work, family and bills, the shorter syllabus instructions is better.
I think the length of the online syllabus depends on the demographic of the student population you are teaching. When I was teaching at an totally online school with mainly adult non-traditional students, our school recommended we use the same standardized syllabus template across all departments in the school to make it easier for the adult students to understand the syllabus. All syllabi all had the same structure and length--short and concise--to accommodate the adult student busy schedule.
So the length and format of your online syllabus is up to how your school does it. No matter where I worked whether face to face or online, the school would give me a syllabus template of what they would like. One school administrator said to me, "Just follow your predecessor's syllabus format and you will be fine. Feel free to choose your own textbooks and assignments."
Before my online school had standardized syllabi, my boss gave me a few syllabi from other teachers and told me to follow whichever syllabus template from other faculty I wanted. I remember one syllabi was the standard 3 or 4 pages and another syllabi was 50 pages. Each faculty member put into his/her syllabi his/her teaching style.
It was only later when the online school transitioned to standardized classes that they also transitioned to standardized syllabi to make it easier for adult students with busy schedules to read shorter syllabi.
Once all syllabi were standardized and all classes were standardized, then all I had to do was put my name, contact information into the blank syllabi as everyone taught exactly the same topics and we were not allowed to change anything on the syllabi after classes became the same.
Therefore, to answer the question, how long should an online syllabus be? The answer is it depends on your school policy, your school template, your school needs, and your student needs. Always ask to see what others have done before you and make one just like it to fit your class.
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