Although through teaching practices and technology tools for distance education is great no matter what modality and circumstances, there are still basic principals of education that are consistent across instruction that fosters an environment of best practices in developmental audiences, participant engagement, learning outcomes, and continuous improvement.
For some of you this might be familiar because you have had experience creating a basic syllabus and understanding why you need it, and developing your own lesson plans that foster student/participant learning and how to improve the specific needs. For those of you who are reading this and thinks this is pretty much a foreign language, donʻt worry as this is just the words teachers will use to develop a visual framework of what you want to accomplish in your course or program at the end, and how you want to organize your thoughts on paper.
No matter what the course topic is these are some similar guidelines that syllabi follow:
Instructor information
Course Outcomes
Course Materials needed and/or books
Topics
Grading policies
Scheduling
School Policy information
However, you can add more information on what you feel is important for your participants need to know. Below is a short video Interview with Amelia Horsburgh, Barbara Phillips, Heather M. Ross and Tracie Risling of the University of Saskatchewan. Instructors share their advice on creating a class syllabus.
https://youtu.be/Mxln5qBDr94
Great! now that youʻve seen the video above, there are other ways that you can tweak your syllabi so that it becomes a voice that allows students to understand your personality and help them to engage with your course content. Most of all, you would have to ensure that you are targeting your audience. Because Edvance instructors range from Pre-K through Adults, use your best judgement on how you would like to design your syllabus. However, to make things a little more consistent for Edvance, we have an attached Fillable from that you can download and fill out. Your guide will be able to bring the completed form to be housed in our digital library. However, if you need further help, we can set you up with our Curriculum Developer.
The Video below is from an online learning community hosted by Building Connections for Success & Faculty Development, by Professor Randi Picarelli shares her strategies for creating and engaging syllabus for students.
https://youtu.be/hqm7CRUiR98
Next Steps:
Now that you have had a short brief on the syllabus you can access the link below and download a copy of the Edvance Syllabus Template for Instructors and fill in. However, if you have questions on how to fill in some areas, we will be happy to help.
Edvance Syllabus Template for Instructors
When this is completed your Edvance guide will let you know what the next process will be.
Other Resources
Helpful Hints
If youʻre delivering a Hybrid course, make sure your are clear to your students:
Be sure to make it clear in your syllabus when students will be meeting in the classroom, and/or when they will be meeting on Zoom/google meets, and/or what needs to be done in Laulima.
An important consideration as you plan your hybrid class is that the time and activities typically done in the classroom should still be accounted for across the delivery modes. Zoom/google meets or Laulima should not be used "just for homework" or "just for questions/help" as homework and getting help is normally done outside of the classroom anyway. On the other hand, if you normally gave a test, video/discussion with prompts to answer in your classroom, you could move that online and count that towards your "classroom time." (see next point to engage in the meeting time)
If Laulima is one of your delivery modes, consider moving the content delivery pieces of your class time to Laulima so that you can reserve your class/Zoom google meet time for discussion, collaboration, group activities, etc.