Week 6 - Chapter 4 Creating an Online Syllabus

If students are going to be successful in an online situation, it seems that the syllabus becomes the most important part of a course. Because of no face-to-face contact and because of asynchronous time, it is important that the learner can find all information he or she needs at the time when he or she wants to find it. The syllabus should be easy to find and then well-organized. The syllabus should include all information about the facilitator, a thorough description of the course, pre-requisites, and learning outcomes. From my personal experience, a week-by-week list of assignments and due dates is always preferred in a syllabus for me. A good syllabus should include all required textbooks, software and technology tools needed, as well as where to get them. If collaboration with peers is going to be needed, this should be listed in the syllabus. Students want to know if a student has a lot of interaction (between students and teachers or students and students) versus interactivity (between students and tools). (Interactive Course Design Rubric http://www.westga.edu/~distance/roblyer32.html) For pre-planning purposes, in particular I would want to know which week I had to allow my schedule to be influenced by the schedule of others. Grades seem to be universally important. I would want to know how the grades were figured as well as the total possible points for an "A", etc. I would want to know ahead of time if extra credit is given or if points were deducted for late assignments.