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Curriculum/Curricular Alignment
Syllabus
Conveying the coherence of your course learning objectives, assessments, and lessons is done within a syllabus. As the syllabus is often the first point of contact between you and students, it provides you with the opportunity to set a welcoming and positive tone for your course.
- Design a learner-centered syllabus (use this rubric to assess your syllabus)
- Add an inclusivity statement to your syllabus
- Make sure your syllabus, textbooks, resources and coursework are accessible to all learners and CSU Accessibility by Design website
- Provide a visual map of the course, including alignment of objectives to assessments
- Include campus resources for students: TILT tutoring, Student Resources and Campus Life
Additional Considerations for Teaching Online
While most of the information on teaching effectiveness pertains to both RI and online classrooms, following are a few key points for online courses.
- A syllabus for an online course may contain some additional information (technology requirements, netiquette rules, information about how the course shell is set up, etc.).
- A fully online course (or even an RI course that uses the learning management system (LMS)) also gives you the opportunity to incorporate your syllabus in ways that you might not in an RI class:
- Send announcements for each module that connect what students will do in that module to meet the module objectives, instructions or other important reminders on the syllabus.
- Reference and link to your syllabus from other pages, assignments and discussions in the LMS.
- Create a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page in the LMS so that students have that information handy.
- If your syllabus is too long (hint-most are), consider pulling some of the information from the syllabus and placing it in a separate PDF on the Syllabus page in Canvas.
Review the Course Preparation Checklist to link your syllabus in Canvas.