Course Construction

This section describes various documents, resources, and materials that you may decide to integrate into your course. Your course content, discipline, and teaching style may also inform how you assemble these resources. Preparing an effective course requires communicating to your students what you expect them to accomplish and how they should go about meeting your expectations.

Syllabus

Your syllabus is the heart of your course. A complete syllabus should establish student expectations and describe the course in fairly specific detail. You may fear you’re being too specific, but it’s better to provide students with highly specific, process-focused information such as:

Course number and title
Your contact information (postal address, telephone, email, fax), a link to your personal web page (if you have one), one to two paragraphs about your professional interests or accomplishments, information about your educational background, a paragraph about your hobbies, interests, or family
Concise paragraph(s) providing official University description or summarizing information approved by the department or school’s curriculum committee
Prerequisite requirements (if any)
Your personal policy for the course including perhaps your teaching philosophy
One or more paragraphs explaining:
- The nature, aims, or significance of the course
- Your own goals for the course
- Possible applications of what students will learn
- Course objectives
- Why the course is important to both you and your students
  - Required and recommended materials including titles, authors, publishers, editions, and copyright dates
  - Statements on nondiscrimination, ADA, academic dishonesty, etc.
  - Description of any required computer software or access
  - Description of laboratory materials or special tools

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Course Schedule

Particularly if your students will be conducting significant work online such as group discussions, quizzes, or assignment submissions, it is vital that your schedule be as integrated as possible, reflecting due dates, where assignments should be submitted (e.g., in class, online via email by noon). You may choose to include a week-by-week run-down providing:

A brief description of content to be covered in each course meeting including information about any special arrangements students must coordinate

Assignments for each week and deadlines for completion
Timelines for lesson discussions/interaction
Examination dates possibly including a description of type or style of exam and length and time needed to complete, with points or percentage each is worth

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Grading Information

The biggest issue for students is knowing what they need to do in order to meet your expectations on assignments. Be specific! We recommend developing grading rubrics (additional information can be found in the assessment section) to help communicate your criteria, which include:

Grading/passing scale, using points or percentages
Possible points for each assignment, examination, student interaction, and class participation.
Description of:

Length, type or style of each examination
Points or percentages exams are worth in addition to any relevant time limits
Directions on accessing an online gradebook
Elements contributing to students’ passing

Information providing advice concerning study techniques you feel might help students succeed. (Encouragement and motivational comments are appropriate in this section.)

A sample syllabus document that includes statements on the ADA, academic honesty, and civility, is available on the ET@MO website in Rich Text Format (RTF) for you to download and modify for your course.

In addition, a PowerPoint presentation on designing outcome based syllabi is available online via the Program for Excellence in Teaching website:

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Contributed by Matthew Livengood, Resident Instructional Instructor, Educational Technologies at Missouri (ET@MO) and Chris Fox, Instructional Specialist, Program for Excellence in Teaching