In an effort to support faculty in creating engaging and interactive environments for online and hybrid courses, the Office of Distance Learning has recently created an interactive syllabus template that faculty can request for new or existing courses.
“Designing the course syllabus to make it interactive can create instructor presence in the online context,” says Dr. Diana Wu, instructional designer. “The syllabus is the first document students look for in every course to get to know their instructor, as well as course contents. Through the template, instructors create a welcoming, accessible, connected, and supportive learning environment.”
The syllabus template features several blocks instructors can use as-is — academic honesty policy, technology requirements and support, and accessibility information, for instance — as well as blocks instructors can easily customize with textbook information, required readings, and rubrics.
The template allows students to find all the information they need for a course directly in Moodle, without having to download a document or navigate away from the course. That makes the design more mobile-friendly for students who are frequently moving from one device to another.
By being able to edit directly in Moodle, instructors gain the advantage of streamlining their process when creating and updating syllabi.
“Our goal in creating it was to put a syllabus in a form that students could easily navigate and something that displays on mobile devices well,” explains Instructional Designer Carey Hamburg. “As a benefit to you as an instructor, it’s something you can easily edit in Moodle, as opposed to taking multiple steps to upload from a Word document. Much of what we talk about with usability is to benefit you as well as the students.”
The template also allows instructors to meet some Quality Matters standards.
The Instructional Support Team will further explain and demonstrate the template’s components during the Moodle User Group meeting 2-3 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in Dupre Library Room D-102. All faculty are welcome.
Instructors can request more information by emailing distancelearning@louisiana.edu.