Tone Affects Access
The tone of a syllabus affects classroom accessibility in important ways. Scholars in universal instructional design emphasize the value of demonstrating approachability and empathy in the syllabus (Orr and Hammig). That way, disabled students feel comfortable approaching a professor to request accommodations.
Researchers have proposed specific ways to modify syllabus tone, such as incorporating warm language, autonomy-promoting language, and cooperative language. These strategies are discussed in more detail below. To be clear, adopting a welcoming tone does not mean ignoring harmful behaviors; rather, it involves intentionally framing expectations and boundaries in ways that encourage student agency and mutual respect.
Not all of these tone-shifting tools will be suitable for all instructors. Instructor identity and institutional context influence decisions about tone. In the next section, we examine how gaps in the research, especially around identity, create challenges in applying these strategies.
Another important limitation to note from the start: many students don’t read the syllabus. Researchers Amy Howton, Mandy McGre, Liyuan Liu, Lauren Staples, and Herman Ray studied the effects of syllabus tone on 1,000 students. They concluded: “It does not matter how learner-centered the syllabus is if the students do not read it.” In many studies, students are required to read the document, but in theirs, students were simply members of the course. When they tracked students’ behavior, few read the syllabus.
This finding reminds us that tone alone is not enough. An engaging syllabus must combine strategies, many of which are outlined on this site, to actually reach students. So, in the final section, we also move beyond tone to provide additional strategies for encouraging students to reach out.
Instructor Positionality Affects Tone
There’s no single way to write a syllabus. This site does not promote a one-size-fits-all approach to syllabus language or encourage you to adopt a voice that feels inauthentic. That could create problems for students and instructors. For example, if the tone of the syllabus does not reflect the actual atmosphere of the classroom, students might be resistant and view the syllabus as misleading.
Like all language, syllabus language is personal and political. As instructors, we must consider how our social identities and positionality shape the classroom alongside our values. For example, different instructors might strive to create conditions for autonomy but use different methods because we don’t all come into the classroom with the same level of automatic authority. Professors Chavella Pittman and Thomas Tobin talk about teacher authority as a “force field.” The teacher position should protect instructors by ensuring respect from students; however, this force field tends to protect those with dominant social identities (2022).
Instructors from marginalized communities often have their authority questioned due to systemic biases, which is evident when students directly challenge authority (Alberts et al.; Wright) and assign lower evaluation scores than they do for professors from dominant groups (American Sociological Society; Heffernan).
Therefore, discrimination can create a double bind for instructors from marginalized communities: sharing authority with students might foster equity and engagement, but will it undermine classroom stability for instructors whose authority is already challenged? And will institutions support instructors if they stray from more traditional methods? These are complex questions.
The research on syllabus tone is limited in helping us answer these questions because it rarely addresses instructor identity. Across studies, students typically evaluate a syllabus with no instructor assigned, meaning that students assess an anonymous version of who they perceive an instructor to be. Their survey responses, then, do not take into account how implicit bias and overt discrimination impact professors from marginalized groups. One study includes gender as a dimension (Waggoner & Veloso), but as of yet, we identified none that address race or other identities.
Below, we review literature on syllabus tone for instructors to consider through the lens of your own experiences in the classroom. We’d love to learn more from readers about approaches that work for you. (Email AccessibleSyllabus@gmail.com)
Warm Syllabus Tone
Some scholarship suggests students respond well to warm syllabus rhetoric. Richard Harnish and Robert Bridges conducted an experiment in which 172 undergraduate students read syllabi containing either warm or cold language and rated professors. Unsurprisingly, students rated the “cold” professor more unfriendly and less approachable than the “warm” professor. But interestingly, students also rated the “cold” course more difficult, even though the requirements were the same. These findings were replicated in a study of 124 master’s students (Sheely-Moore et al.). The chart below shows examples of the language differences in Harnish and Bridges’ study.
| Sample Phrases from Cold Syllabus | Sample Phrases from Warm Syllabus |
| “Come prepared to actively participate in this course. This is the best way to engage you in learning.” | “I hope you actively participate in this course…because I have found it is the best way to engage you in learning.” |
| “traumatic events…are no excuse for not contacting me within 24 h.” | “traumatic events… are unwelcome, and because I understand how difficult these times are, if you contact me within 24 h of the event and provide documentation, I will be happy to give you a make-up exam.” |
Additional studies on warm-tone show other potential positive effects. Researchers Regan Gurung and Noelle Galardi surveyed 257 students and found that students were more likely to say they would reach out to an instructor if the syllabus was warm-toned. The same finding was previously demonstrated by Rose Perrine, James Lisle, and Debbie Tucker. Additionally, they rated the anonymous instructor more highly if they used a warm-toned syllabus than a cold one.
Syllabus researchers Jeanne Slattery and Janet Carlson describe an interesting unpublished lecture given by V.M. Littlefield. Littlefield reported that participants in her study “remembered the information on warm syllabi better than that on less student-friendly syllabi.”
Notably, warm tone does not have an effect on how students perceive the competence of an anonymous instructor (Gurung and Galardi; Nusbaum et al.; Waggoner & Veloso) or their organizational skill, knowledge, professionalism, and experience (Nusbaum et al.). In Waggoner & Veloso’s study, this remained true for male, female, and gender-unspecified instructors. The study did not account for intersectional differences in how students treat women instructors or study students’ perceptions of nonbinary and/or gender-expansive instructors.
Autonomy-Promoting Language
Additional research outlines the potential benefits of an autonomy-promoting syllabus. This type of syllabus language prioritizes choice, minimizes pressure, and justifies assignments. In contrast, a controlling syllabus prioritizes compliance, increases pressure, and employs threats. The table below shows how researchers shift from controlling language to autonomy-supporting alternatives (Herrera et al.).
| Controlling Syllabus | Autonomy-Supportive Syllabus |
| This course will cover eleven chapters from the required textbook, to be reviewed in order throughout the semester. The professor expects to cover at least one chapter per week, and students should complete the readings BEFORE each class. | I have chosen a textbook that I find particularly well-written for our subject. We will cover eleven chapters that students have found most interesting in the past. I encourage you to read each chapter before class (…). |
| By appointment only. | I will hold weekly office hours on Tuesdays from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. and Fridays from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. (…) My door is open to you if you need it! |
| Emails will only be responded to during weekly office hours. No tutoring will be offered via email. | Emails will be answered within two business days. I reserve the right to refrain from responding to emails that use disrespectful language. |
| Absences from evaluations without a valid reason will not be tolerated. If you miss an evaluation without explanation, a penalty will be imposed. Reasons such as travel, employment, or errors in reading the exam schedule will not be accepted. | I understand that we all occasionally face unexpected situations. In case of absence from the midterm or final exam, please provide me with any legitimate documentation to justify it. |
University of Ottawa researchers Jully Paola Merchán Tamayo, Meredith Rocchi, Jenepher Lennox Terrion, and Simon Beaudry showed that students had more positive feelings toward a course and instructor with an autonomy-supporting syllabus compared to a controlling syllabus. In the U.S., Adena Young-Jones, Chantal Levesque, Sophie Fursa, and Jason McCain showed that this kind of syllabus increased students’ belief that an instructor would listen to them and made them more likely to enroll in the course. An international research team, including Dora Herrera (Lima, Peru), Aranza Lira-Delcore (Madrid, Spain), and Benjamín Lira Luttges (Philadelphia, USA), also reported favorable results: students rated the course as more engaging and fair.
In Anne-Marie Womack’s classes, she prioritizes invitations over commands to foster student choice and autonomy. These invitation-based statements are most effective when students have meaningful options in how they can participate, submit work, and earn points. And they must retain clarity as well.
| Commands | Invitations |
| “You must complete makeup work to receive credit.”“You are allowed to…”
“I only accept…” |
“Feel free to complete makeup work to earn credit.”“You are welcome to…”
“I encourage you to…” |
Invitations signal respect and trust–but only when real choice is possible. It would not be appropriate to make a statement like, “I welcome you to complete assignments on time or earn a zero.” The tonal mismatch could create resistance in students.
Logical Consequences
In cases where flexibility isn’t feasible in a course, instructors can reduce the risk of sounding overly punitive by framing policies as logical consequences rather than retributive punishments. In this approach, instructors explain explicitly how guidelines are designed to support learning and collaboration, not just enforce compliance.
Much of the research on logical consequences has been conducted on children rather than college students, but it offers some insight into how learners might respond to authority figures setting boundaries. Research with 8- to 13-year-olds suggests that logical consequences—particularly when explained with a clear rationale—are perceived as more acceptable and just as effective as mild punishments (Mageau et al., 2018). A global study of 12- to 20-year-olds similarly affirms the value of “pairing constraints with reasoning” (Robichaud et al., 2024). These scholars found that when parents used logical consequences rather than more controlling approaches, adolescents were more likely to view those interventions as acceptable and to follow the rules for internal reasons.
When instructors explain the reasoning behind classroom policies, they help students understand their purpose. This approach fosters transparency, trust, and a shared sense that rules exist to support learning and equity—not to impose control.
When designing consequences, consider your learning goals. Point deductions are often less effective than offering meaningful ways for students to complete the learning. For example, if a student misses a class, they could share a reflection on the day’s readings or create a slide deck to help other students review the content. If a student misses peer review and classmates are unavailable to repeat the assignment outside of class, the student could meet with a peer tutor to review their work and practice giving feedback by critiquing a sample paper from a past student.
Womack uses logical consequences to take into account her needs as well as students. When students submit major assignments more than about a week late, they can earn full points, but not comments. In the syllabus, she explains that she cannot effectively engage with work that is weeks old after grading has moved on. This consequence acknowledges workload realities and aims to be transparent about the time constraints shared by students and instructors.
We are very interested to learn about other types of consequences and boundaries that instructors use beyond deducting points. (Email AccessibleSyllabus@gmail.com)
Cooperative Rhetoric for Discussing Disability
The syllabus typically includes an official disability statement, and instructors should critically consider how that statement frames disability. Unfortunately, standard institutional language often presents access as an administrative burden rather than a shared responsibility.
A compelling alternative comes from the University of Arkansas’s Disability Resource Center. In 2014, their guide “Reframing Disability” encouraged cooperative rather than paternalistic language. (While the resource is no longer available on their site, it is housed at ExploreAccess.com.) This language shift aligns with broader movements in disability studies that emphasize student agency and position access as a collective, relational practice, as scholar Tanya Titchkosky describes.
| Paternalistic Language | Cooperative Language |
| assist
allowable receive support services The services you need. |
collaborate
usable, equitable, sustainable create an inclusive learning environment Creative solutions. Together. |
When we revisited Arkansas’ website in 2025, we found that it had expanded its discussion of the social model of disability. This model contrasts with the more dominant medical model, which frames disability as an individual problem that needs to be cured or fixed. By contrast, the social model understands disability as the result of societal barriers, not bodily deficits. The key distinctions between the two models are outlined below, based on Carol J. Gill’s work.
| Medical Model | Social Model |
| Disability is a deficiency or abnormality | Disability is a difference |
| Being disabled is negative | Being disabled, in itself, is neutral |
| Disability resides in the individual | Disability derives from interaction between individual and society |
| The remedy for disability-related problems is cure or normalization of the individual | The remedy for disability-related problems is a change in the interaction between the individual and society |
| The agent of remedy is the professional | The agent of remedy is the individual, an advocate, or anyone who affects the arrangements between the individual and society |
Applying these ideas to the syllabus, all references to disability should reflect an empowering and theoretically-grounded view of disabled identity. The policies page on this site includes examples of disability statements that enact these principles.
Beyond Tone
While this page focuses on syllabus tone, inclusion also depends on visual access, thoughtful design, and equitable policies, topics explored elsewhere on this site. These elements work together with language to shape how students experience the syllabus.
Some of the research we have already discussed on this page emphasizes strategies beyond tone that can achieve inclusive goals, such as encouraging students to reach out. In Gurung and Galardi’s study, for example, a “Reach Out” statement increased the likelihood that students would reach out if they experienced difficulties. That was true even if the syllabus was written with cold language. Moreover, the combination of warm language and a reachout statement did not produce a greater combined benefit. The statement read:
University students encounter setbacks from time to time. If you encounter difficulties and need assistance, it’s important to reach out. Consider discussing the situation with an instructor or academic advisor. Learn about resources that assist with wellness and academic success at Oregon State University. If you are in immediate crisis, please contact the Crisis Text Line or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Another study found that when instructors include a welcome statement in the syllabus, students said they were more likely to seek support in office hours and ask questions in class (LaPiene et al. 2011).
Amber Dickinson created more encouraging classroom emails to achieve greater student outreach. She sent out an introductory welcome email, wished students good luck throughout the semester, and sent additional notes of encouragement.
These are some of the many strategies to encourage students to reach out. Inclusive tone matters, but it’s one part of a broader ecosystem of design, engagement, and access.