S.O.S. = Save Our Syllabus

If you are tired of reminding your students to, "Read your syllabus for that information," you might be interested in how one faculty decided to incorporate her syllabus into a learning resource....and saved her syllabus.

Joanne Marciano Crossman, EdD. professor of Education at Saint Leo University in Florida, always provides her syllabus to her students.  Yet she was bewildered by the fact her students still didn't seem to actually 'read the syllabus'.

Joanne has come up with a few strategies. While Joanne teaches Face-to-Face courses, her techniques can easily be adapted for online delivery.

• As you probably do, Joanne includes an index of recommended website resources in her syllabi.  She was finding [as you might] that many of these pertinent resources were ignored.  So, Joanne correlates several website resources into each class.  You might consider adding your website resources into your Weekly Overviews.  

• this might be a link to a website that gives an overview of the week's content or a link to interactive tools relevant to your course.  Just add the website links to serve as resources so students don't just "Google" information and use the top ranking website.

• You might want to refer to your syllabus when describing an Assignment and refer to learning activities and objectives, listed in your syllabus. 

• If you list any rubrics in your syllabus, add them into Canvas.  This not only offers your students a graphic representation of your expectations, it will help you when grading assignments etc.

• This last tip is one of my own.  You might also want to add a little 'Quiz' into your Introductory Module, with all questions leading your students back to the syllabus for answers.  It can even be 'Open Syllabus'.  Anything to get them to read this important document.

If you would like to read more from Joanne, please take a look at her June 9, 2014 article in Faculty Focus, Using Your Syllabus as a Learning Resource.

If you have any specific question we would be happy to speak with you directly, please call 413-565-6880 or email us at online@baypath.edu