Syllabus Overview
Overview
The syllabus is the most important document in an online course. It serves as a contract with the student and so must contain all of the elements that will contribute to the success of the student. The syllabus will be the one place, the roadmap, if you will, where students should be able to discern every detail about their course.
You cannot, unfortunately, just take your face to face syllabus, add the line "This is a fully online course." ...And call it a day. When you teach a face-to-face course, as the instructor you will likely spend much of the first class describing the course, including the assignments, expectations, and policies. You do not get that chance in an online course and the students may feel disoriented if they don't know" the rules". Any instructions that you would verbally provide to your on-ground students must be clearly written in the syllabus.This not only helps the students but should save you time as well when you don't have to answer the same question multiple times.
Do keep in mind that redundancy is also important so while you may list all of your assignments in the syllabus, you should also have them listed on the Activities page in your weekly modules and perhaps even mention them in your weekly announcements.
As stated in our rubric Download rubric (link to the rubric from the USHI docs), the following elements should be included in every syllabus:
- Meeting Times
- Contact Information
- Course Description
- Objectives/Outcomes
- Required Textbook(s)
- Supplemental Materials
- Evaluation Criteria/ Grading
- Course Policies
- University Policies
- Schedule
- Description of Assignment
In a nutshell, an effective syllabus would look similar to the one on the next page.