Faculty Focus

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Ever wonder why students dont read the syllabus, despite the time and effort we put into creating it? It serves as a contract between instructors and students (Eberly, Newton, & Wiggins, 2001), outlining the entire semesters expectations, assignments, and deadlines. Use Notebook LM to create a podcast of your syllabus.

Syllabus 98

Syllabus Students Activities Instructors 98

Faculty Focus

AUGUST 31, 2023

Recently, I attended a conference and was sharing my new visual syllabus with some colleagues. After several interactions, I noticed the most frequent comment was, “What a cool syllabus…but is it accessible?” A little background about myself; I love designing, redesigning, and getting creative with my syllabus.

Syllabus 98

Syllabus Accessibility Quizzes Disabilities 98

Faculty Focus

MAY 29, 2025

This step was taken especially since it became more difficult for me over the years in the classroom to keep todays device-driven students focused beyond 10 seconds or less on an assigned major concept for each of my fifty-minute classes.Retained learning was there but not at the expected levels.In

Student Engagement 81

Student Engagement Syllabus Learning Students 81

eSchool News

OCTOBER 2, 2023

Planners that break down assignments, scaffolded note-taking templates, or even a syllabus can make all the difference in setting clear expectations. Equally, because many students with dyslexia grapple with executive function skills, it’s helpful to offer tools that support organization.

Reading 306

Reading Syllabus Learning Intelligence 306

Edsurge

JULY 19, 2019

What if you could map every book and article assigned in college courses around the world and see which authors are making the most impact? It’s called the Open Syllabus Project , and this week its leaders released a new version of their tool that analyzes assignment lists from more than six million syllabi. But version 2.0,

Syllabus 167

Syllabus Assignments History Knowledge 167

eSchool News

AUGUST 29, 2024

Additionally, these digital tools need to support the means of expression through written assignments, presentations, or discussions to make the learning environment as engaging as possible.

Learning 306

Learning Universal Design Syllabus Quizzes 306

eSchool News

OCTOBER 7, 2015

Prepare syllabus and assignment due dates carefully and well in advance so that students know what to expect and when. Instead of just reading and writing weekly assignments from a book, students read and write in service of completing a larger project. Establish good course practices. Present material in different ways.

Education 279

Education Syllabus Instructors Feedback 279

eSchool News

MARCH 24, 2020

Course Wizard – a course creation tool that allows you to custom-build activities based on vocabulary in your syllabus or from an excerpt of text. The process takes only seconds and assigning it to your classroom is easy. Available only in certain language pairs.

Languages 195

Languages Language Learning Tools Syllabus 195

Edsurge

APRIL 26, 2018

On Tuesday, April 24 the #DLNchat community got together to discuss and debate: How Can Alternative Assignments Effectively Assess Student Learning? Where there’s an alternative there must be a standard, so we started our chat creating a list of what those standard assignment are: exams, quizzes, essays, reports, lab manuals and the like.

Assignments 97

Assignments Exams Instructors Learning 97

eSchool News

OCTOBER 25, 2024

I typically assign a hefty 20-page final project in my STEM course, but I decided to take a more playful and hands-on approach for this group of students. My motivation was simple: I wanted to help the class build confidence in teaching STEAM concepts. This is a key consideration as I continue refining my courses for future educators.

Teaching 278

Teaching Teachers STEM Syllabus 278

Edsurge

OCTOBER 29, 2018

I like being able to see when assignments are due, as it helps me recognize the need to block off time in my calendar for grading. I grew tired of uploading the syllabus as a file within our LMS, only to need to upload a new version every single semester. I would name it something like syllabus-BUSN114.pdf syllabus-BUSN114.pdf)

Syllabus 139

Syllabus Mobile Devices Learning Assignments 139

Catlin Tucker

AUGUST 17, 2022

Instead of handing students a syllabus with a set of class rules, engage your students in the process of co-constructing classroom agreements about behaviors. The urgency of an assignment or task may make it feel important when it actually is not. So, how do we help students make responsible decisions?

Learning 370

Learning Syllabus Evaluation Discussions 370

eSchool News

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Some believe it will cripple the education system and replace human workers ; others denounce ChatGPT as a free essay-writing and test-taking tool that makes it laughably easy to cheat on assignments, while the validity of responses generated by ChatGPT has also been called into question.

Ethics 339

Ethics Essay Syllabus Feedback 339

Edsurge

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

I think the phenomena of the infographic syllabus has been an effort by many teachers to make that document more accessible, more real,” she explains. “We We can solve a lot of problems as educators if we can just get people to read the syllabus upfront.”.

Syllabus 167

Syllabus Teachers Course Outline English 167

Edsurge

JUNE 6, 2024

Tech giants Google, Microsoft and OpenAI have unintentionally assigned educators around the world major homework for the summer: Adjusting their assignments and teaching methods to adapt to a fresh batch of AI features that students will enter classrooms with in the fall. That’s going to be a real time saver for faculty,” he predicts.

Lecturing 215

Lecturing Education Assignments Syllabus 215

Edsurge

JANUARY 9, 2019

Dropbox Paper or Google Docs : these mainstream collaborative word-processing tools let instructors invite students to collaborate on assignments or group work. This past semester, each student submitted reading notes as an assignment in the LMS. Trello : a virtual stack of index cards where students can add their ideas.

Instructors 165

Instructors Syllabus Peer Review Students 165

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 13, 2024

Instead of thinking about the LMS as simply a repository for course essentials (syllabus, contact information, etc.), Duplicate or misplaced assignment pages create confusion (and potentially issues with the gradebook). consider how it might be used as a tool for enhancing student learning and engagement. across the course.

Syllabus 122

Syllabus Instructors Assignments Faculty Development 122

Faculty Focus

MARCH 14, 2023

The following includes a few strategies and examples to ensure clarity: A clear, inclusive syllabus with a course calendar of class activities, routines, materials, links to rubrics, etc. Clear expectations for all assignments, homework, activities, etc. Wisner, 2022). A clear agenda for each class.

Syllabus 131

Syllabus Exams Instructors Assignments 131

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 23, 2016

A few repositories like the Open Syllabus Project collect syllabi from around the world. For example, Bruff teaches a statistics course where he uses an infographics assignment that he adapted from Sidneyeve Matrix, an associate professor at Queen’s University, in Canada. “In As scholars, we probably should do something like that.

Teaching Portfolio 167

Teaching Portfolio Teaching Syllabus Peer Review 167

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 22, 2017

But Chatterjee, an international student from India, did not feel confident about the assignment, and thought it was Western-centric and focused on physical powers associated with attractive males. Based on that feedback, the professor, Julia Parra, says she changed the assignment to make it broader, and more inclusive.

Culture 148

Culture Teaching Syllabus English 148

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

I recall one student who would wait until the night of the assignment deadline to dive into their schoolwork. All too often, they would wind up needing to ask their instructor a question about the assignment but had no time to receive an answer before the deadline passed. Don’t wait for an assignment notification to get started.

Online Learning 180

Online Learning Instructors Coaching Syllabus 180

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 15, 2023

What’s it like going from one course that simply posts a syllabus in the LMS to another that makes more robust use of the tools and features? Organization and structure  Students appreciate courses where assignments and course materials are organized and structured. Avoid confusing instructions.

Syllabus 126

Syllabus Instructors Peer Review Lecturing 126

Edsurge

MARCH 7, 2024

The AI agents will also be fed information from the course syllabi and turn in assignments. Brott says he has experimented with ChatGPT on a few assignments for classes. The concept is: What if a syllabus was something that students could ask questions of rather than a static document? “If

Intelligence 212

Intelligence Syllabus Feedback Assignments 212

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

Since he has been forced to teach online during COVID, to students who are struggling with job losses and disruptions, he has realized that most students want to learn, even if they may not meet the strict requirements on the syllabus. “I

Exams 172

Exams Syllabus Lecturing Testing 172

Faculty Focus

JUNE 2, 2024

Aside from a bare-bones syllabus, the professor never showed up. Most of our grade was supposed to come from a single class project, but no assignment instructions were ever posted. But what about this assignment that was worth so much of our grade? I emailed the professor and waited…and waited…and waited—silence.

Syllabus 131

Syllabus Course Design Learning Students 131

Cult of Pedagogy

MAY 11, 2025

Communicate major assignments and assessments in advance and give students opportunities to plan their time and effort. In a classroom focused on avoiding errors and completing tasks, students may see the purpose of a math assignment as completing items 1-17 without any errors so it can be checked and graded.

Academic Integrity 88

Academic Integrity Learning Assignments Feedback 88

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 20, 2018

Students cheating on assignments is hardly a new or surprising problem. In research and surveys conducted by Dr. Donald McCabe and the International Center for Academic Integrity over the span of 12 years, 68 percent of undergraduates who responded admitted to cheating on tests or written assignments.

Academic Integrity 148

Academic Integrity Exams Assignments Instructors 148

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 13, 2024

Instead of thinking about the LMS as simply a repository for course essentials (syllabus, contact information, etc.), Duplicate or misplaced assignment pages create confusion (and potentially issues with the gradebook). consider how it might be used as a tool for enhancing student learning and engagement. across the course.

Syllabus 105

Syllabus Instructors Assignments Faculty Development 105

Edsurge

OCTOBER 22, 2021

Argos is calling its courseware platform and marketplace Sojourner, and the goal is to make it a hub for professors and students to create, assign and use digital course materials, in a way that allows for rich analytics for professors, showing them how their students are using materials.

Textbooks 172

Textbooks Syllabus Instructors Peer Review 172

Faculty Focus

MARCH 12, 2023

The first day or week of the semester is often referred to as what students call “syllabus week,” because professors typically spend the first day of class reviewing the syllabus—interject a big yawn here. At this point, I still have not reviewed the syllabus with them and instead begin a community building activity.

Student Engagement 116

Student Engagement Activities Syllabus Instructors 116

Edsurge

MARCH 2, 2023

Classes don’t start and end according to an academic calendar, but begin when a student clicks “start course” and gets assigned a faculty member. On average, instructors are assigned 230 students at a time--a big change from the 20 or 30 I was used to at NYU and Stevens. Southern New Hampshire’s course completion rate is 90 percent.

Teaching 169

Teaching Instructors Syllabus Assignments 169

Faculty Focus

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

Similar to Darby, I believe conversations about academic integrity and assignment design are crucial, and these conversations should extend to other learning spaces. For example, at the beginning of a tutoring session, the tutor could ask students to review the assignment directions and the instructor’s syllabus. Teach them.

Syllabus 124

Syllabus Academic Integrity eLearning Assignments 124

Edsurge

OCTOBER 27, 2020

My syllabus had a no-technology policy and it wasn’t perfect, but it helped. I can cut a lot of slack, extend deadlines or excuse assignments. Later in my career, as I moved districts and technology became more accessible, I had to contend with the sly texting in their laps, though they’d pretend to be on task. I performed then too.

Teachers 212

Teachers Syllabus Schools Students 212

Faculty Focus

MAY 9, 2024

As educators and students grapple with what is allowed when using generative AI (GenAI) tools, I have compiled five tips to help you design or redesign academic integrity statements for your syllabus, assignments, exams, and course activities. Students might benefit from using these tools on some assignments, but not others.

Academic Integrity 137

Academic Integrity Writing Syllabus Exams 137

Faculty Focus

OCTOBER 15, 2023

What’s it like going from one course that simply posts a syllabus in the LMS to another that makes more robust use of the tools and features? Organization and structure  Students appreciate courses where assignments and course materials are organized and structured. Avoid confusing instructions.

Syllabus 111

Syllabus Instructors Peer Review Lecturing 111

Faculty Focus

AUGUST 20, 2024

We may not have a storefront window to attract attention, but we do have something that students see before the start of the semester that can grab their attention, set the tone, and get them excited about entering the class…your syllabus! Exhibit 2: Thompson’s Barbie themed class syllabus (Spring 2024). Let Them Play! Stay Playful!

Syllabus 111

Syllabus Attention Assignments Activities 111

Faculty Focus

AUGUST 20, 2024

We may not have a storefront window to attract attention, but we do have something that students see before the start of the semester that can grab their attention, set the tone, and get them excited about entering the class…your syllabus! Exhibit 2: Thompson’s Barbie themed class syllabus (Spring 2024). Let Them Play! Stay Playful!

Syllabus 111

Syllabus Attention Assignments Activities 111