The interactive syllabus!
Since I was lucky enough to actually attend Lisa’s online Eluminate session back in 2010, I have actually already used many of these ideas on my f2f syllabus which is listed on Bb.
This is the way I envision my course menu to look:
- “Start Here”- course intro video
- “Week 1: Due xx-xx-xxxx” – interactive syllabus. This will have all the videos/assignments/quizzes/etc. with direct links to everything. Students will have anything they need for week 1.
- “FAQ: Course Policies” – This will answer “housekeeping” type questions.
- “FAQ: Course Materials” – Course material info.
- “FAQ: Technical Difficulties” – This will answer technical problems.
- “FAQ: My grade” – Summary of grading policies.
- “FAQ: Personal questions” – ways to contact me.
Perhaps this will change a bit… but this is how I see things looking now based on the readings, the Eluminate sessions & Pilar’s screencast.
Nice.
So what happens for week 2? Do you keep adding to the menu each week?
FAQs are another good way to post course information that’s not specific to a particular weekly lesson or topic. Your FAQ categories are well organized and leave little room for confusion over which one to use.
Hi Norm,
Yes, that is the plan. As week 1 disappears, week 2 shows up, etc… Just keep it clean, so students don;t get lost.
Happy Friday!
Donna
Do you have a way to make the updates happen automatically, or do you have to remember to do it each week?
If you are replacing the menu item each week, how does a student access previous weeks, say for review ?
I think there is a way in Bb to set the dates that menu items are available for viewing….
As far as accessing old information for review goes, this is a great question! I wonder if you could group old weeks together under one separate menu item for easy access? This is a question I will pose to my colleagues who are currently teaching online. Thank you for your thoughts!!
I like to have the main page of the course be an interactive calendar surrounded / framed by support resources and tools presented as smaller boxes or portals around that main calendar. If you keep the calendar as the main page all semester, then students can easily go back and retrieve information as the semester advances
Hi Donna,
Like the idea of an interactive syllabus. Working in Moodle we don’t use one (not sure if we can) as we assume in self-paced courses the students will want to jump all over. Thinking about this makes me wonder if we are being too open? Whether students are in blended or fully online mode, having the content appear in order would keep some of the logic behind presenting topics in a linear way.
Some of our students jump ahead and skip sections they think they “already know” and miss things. (This is a particular problem in the trades). Do you have a comparrison between before and after on the interactive layout you are using?