Your syllabus is, of course, the cornerstone of your course. At the least, you should share your syllabus as an accessible file (in Microsoft Word or PDF format) linked from your Canvas Syllabus page.

Best practice is to additionally share the most important information on the Syllabus page directly, on your Welcome Page, and in your course Modules, as appropriate. The UWT E-Syllabus is both a useful combined resource to link to and a source of information and language you can use in your Syllabus.

If you choose to use one, UWT Templates provide customizable pages for this purpose; even if you don’t use a template directly, you can see how this combination might work in a course to inform your practice.

The Canvas Syllabus Page

We recommend, as you can see in the course template, that you use the Syllabus page, accessible using the main navigation to the left, brief, providing there:

  1. A link to your complete syllabus (as a PDF file, Word document, or Canvas page)
  2. Your course's description, learning objectives, and format (how the course is delivered and attended)

The reason for keeping the information provided in the Syllabus page brief is to keep the automatically generated Course Summary on that page accessible without a lot of scrolling.

The Course Summary provides an automatically updated interactive list of assignments, due dates, events, and action items in the course. It is likely the main reason your students will return to the Syllabus page after the course has started.

Furthermore, your students will not only have the full syllabus available to them as a separate document or page, but they will also be exposed to the most  important information as part of the prep modules!

Syllabus Engagement Strategies

You know your syllabus is full of useful information, but how do you get your students to read it? The required prep modules are intentionally redundant, covering the most important points, but we still want students to read the syllabus. Following are some clever, low-stakes ways other instructors have approached this.

The Syllabus Walkthrough

Create a video of yourself going through the syllabus, elaborating on the most important points. You can do this during a synchronous class session, if you have them, but providing this ahead of time—and possibly following it with one of the assignments below—saves that valuable class time for more important matters.

Your walkthrough video could be part of a video introducing yourself and the course. Three for one! Some examples:

The Syllabus Quiz

A required quiz on the syllabus can be an effective check that students have read the syllabus, even if they look the answers up as they go! You could add passing a syllabus quiz as a required part of your prep modules. Some examples:

Annotating the Syllabus

Having your students annotate a copy of the syllabus, directed by your prompts and questions, is a great way to lead students into reading your syllabus in more detail. This can be done in a number of ways: providing a digital copy that the students mark up and return, linking them to a shared document that they can add to, or using a web annotation tool.

Examples:

Syllabus Scavenger Hunt

Usually administered as an online, auto-graded quiz, or a low-stakes written assignment, the syllabus scavenger hunt is a venerable activity in the online teaching world. Some examples:

The scavenger hunt activity can be more interactive and engaging, by having students not only find information, but actively learn by doing. This interactive scavenger hunt in Canvas is a fine example.

Syllabus Reflection

Instead of a quiz, you can assign a syllabus reflection assignment, asking your students to reflect on the syllabus. Some examples of such assignments:

 

Syllabus Resources

As you consider what is in your syllabus, you might find the UWT page on Required and Suggested Syllabi Service Statements useful.

For online courses, we strongly suggest linking to The e-Syllabus page that provides links to services and resources that are useful for the online student.