Though certainly not the most fun part of teaching, creating a comprehensive syllabus is very important for laying the foundation for a course and it sets the tone for the class.\u00a0 Syllabi for online courses are even more critical as they must include pretty much everything you don’t have the luxury of verbally saying to your students in person on the first day of class. Chapter 5 of Ko and Rossen is great for first-time instructors of online classes. For some reason, I feel like I’ve already learned much of the information they presented either at a Flex workshop or at some other professional development activity. Nevertheless, I did find a few useful tidbits in the reading.<\/p>\n
I liked the authors’ suggestion of repeating information either in full or by referring back to the complete directions in the syllabus. As stated on page 125, “In an online environment, redundancy is often better than elegant succinctness”. I completely agree. I am always disheartened when a student does not earn full credit for an assignment because they did not heed the instructions that were given multiple times. I also appreciate Ko and Rossen’s idea of making instructions I may have provided earlier in the course readily accessible to students so that they don’t have to go back and search for what I said.<\/p>\n
The quote on page 124 also resonated with me: “There’s obviously a balance between readable brevity and a syllabus so voluminous as to be intimidating”. I have struggled here a bit. The syllabus for my online classes is currently six pages, and I include it as a printable .pdf. I repeat certain information from my syllabus in different places on Blackboard, e.g. information on how to reach the student help desk and how to get in touch with me, but I don’t feel that I can cut anything in my current syllabus out in order to make it shorter. I would be interested in hearing what other instructors do. We use an interactive online syllabus for this class, and it works. I thought I wouldn’t feel comfortable using it in my online classes, however, because I want my students to see all of the grading criteria, the course calendar, and the do’s and don’t’s of the course, and I want it all to be centrally located. But after watching the introductory video for our POT cert class this week, I have been converted! I can see how an interactive online syllabus complete with color, graphics, and perhaps video (when I can ever find time to videotape myself!) would be much more appealing and engaging for students. I can also see how it would benefit students whose first language is other than English, a student population that makes up a significant percentage of my classes.<\/p>\n
I understand that written syllabi are very dry and not the most engaging documents for students to read, so perhaps one day I will read my syllabus to my students in a Youtube video. This syllabus reading video certainly grabbed my attention!<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xGpA0Mjk9Ps<\/p>\n
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Though certainly not the most fun part of teaching, creating a comprehensive syllabus is very important for laying the foundation for a course and it sets the tone for the class.\u00a0 Syllabi for online courses are even more critical as … Continue reading