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Syllabus Design

Best practices and templates for creating a student-friendly syllabus

Canvas and Your Syllabus

The Canvas learning management system includes a built-in page for the course syllabus. Canvas will automatically create a list of assignments by due date (as long as they are available to students). On the syllabus page, you should upload your document as a Microsoft Word file and/or PDF. The university syllabus addendum also goes on this page.

Embedding the Syllabus

The way you upload your syllabus can help your course comply with federal accessibility laws. The best method is to use the Rich Content Editor:

  1. In the textbox, type the name of your file, e.g. EDUC 1000 Syllabus Fall 2020
  2. Place your cursor on the name you just typed and highlight it.
  3. Upload the file.

Canvas will create a link to the syllabus file. For details, see the illustrated tutorial for how to insert files into the Rich Content Editor.

Using a Syllabus Quiz

If you were to search the Internet for "It's in the syllabus" images, you would see a plethora of funny (or not so funny) memes where Captain Picard, Boromir, Willy Wonka, or other pop-culture characters are expressing the frustration of many a professor: how to get students to actually read the syllabus.

Consider setting up a syllabus quiz. Let students know they may use the document to answer questions and make multiple attempts to achieve 100%. Canvas will allow for automatically keeping the highest score. 

If you teach online, the online course template comes with a generic quiz that you may remove, use as is, or customize with questions that pertain to your actual course. 

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