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Extracting Syllabi Information for Distance Courses

Why?

Most instructors provide numerous procedural requirements within a course syllabus. There is certainly nothing wrong with this. Somewhere in your course, you must cover the requirements and course procedures in sufficient detail to withstand student challenges. The point we want to emphasize is that most online students do not read large complex documents. Contemporary students tend to browse for the specific information needed at the moment. As we move forward with distance courses, it is important to realize the print-based syllabi is a legacy from the F2F instructional world. Print-based syllabi work because most instructors supplement the syllabi with explanation and guided exploration at the first course meeting. Important points are emphasized and students can clarify questions about specific parts of the syllabus during the initial meeting.

If instructors merely transport this print-based syllabi to the distance course, students miss the detailed explanation provided in many F2F courses. Students are left to their own devices to interpret the writings and must dig through a large amount of information to find the one sentence or paragraph addressing the issue at question.

Extracting important information from the syllabus and placing it in a more readable format will help students find the necessary information more rapidly. Most distance educators teach more than one distance course. Organizing and extracting the most critical information creates a file that can be used across multiple courses.     

Implications for Teaching and Learning.

• Having both a print version and an electronic version of your syllabi increases the liklihood that students will find pertinent information.
• Using headings and smaller organizational units matches what we know about how users read while online.
• Electronic versions of key syllabi elements are available any time a student is in the course.  Challenges about locating key material in the syllabus are moot since students can access these at any time, with only a small amount of searching.
• Although many consider the syllabi to be the legal "dos and don'ts" for the course, making important information available to online learners allows instructors to emphasize the procedural requirments for the course. This fits into the overall idea to establish clear and understandable expectations at the outset of the course.
• Instructors have the option to emphasize course expectations in language that is less legalistic than often seen in syllabi.   

Promising Practices at TWU. 

•  Create a print version of the syllabi so students have the option to download and print the syllabi. We recommend the syllabus be in PDF format to ensure that all students can print the version.
• Create a menu item that links to both a print version of the syllabi and to the most important information about the course (late policy, preferred communication mode, expected instructor turn-around time, etc.).
• Communicate to students that they have 24/7 access to a location for all procedural information and that students should always access this area before asking questions about procedures.
• Use the .zip file created by TWU Instructional Design if you don't want to create electronic elements from scratch.

How?

There are several ways to extract information from your course syllabus to make it easier for online students to locate and use. The TWU Instructional Design team has put together a .zip file to make the task a bit easier for you. If you choose to use the file, once you insert the file into your course you will have a menu item for Syllabus and an area where you can upload your entire syllabus (we suggest saving the file as a PDF so it is viewed on any machine) and an area where you can insert specific information from your syllabus that you wish to highlight for online students. Each category in the file is customizable so you have full control of the language and the content used in each section.

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