The Impact of a Visually Rich Criminal Justice Syllabus on Course and Instructor Perceptions and Immediate Syllabus Knowledge: A Randomized Experiment

The syllabus often shapes students’ first impressions of a course, but whether visual design improves those impressions or immediate knowledge is unclear. In this randomized experiment, 229 undergraduates enrolled outside criminal justice reviewed either a visually engaging or traditional text-based criminal justice syllabus with equivalent content. The versions differed in color, icons, imagery, spacing, organization, and length. After approximately 10 min, participants rated the instructor, syllabus, and course and completed a five-item syllabus knowledge quiz. Two-tailed Welch’s t tests found no statistically significant differences across the four outcomes (all p values ≥ .071); standardized effects were small (Cohen’s d = .08–.25). These findings do not provide statistically significant evidence of an immediate advantage for this particular visual design, but do not establish that visual syllabi are generally ineffective. Future research should examine longer-term retention, overlapping perception measures, and students enrolled in the discipline.