Constructing a Course? Start with your Syllabus

Here's a great blog post about how you can utilize your syllabus as the basis of your road map for course construction in Moodle from Instructional Systems Design (id.MaryParke.com). As the summer months approach, it's a great time to catch up on Moodle best practices and put some effort into creating and modifying your digital classroom to flow better during the school year. Effort now might be efficiency later.

So, if you're embarking on your first Moodle course this summer, here's a great place to start: Your Course Syllabus. This is a road map for your online classroom. Not all of the information needs to be presented in the Moodle classroom, but schedules of activities (assignments), important due dates, topics, projects and other relevant information all might find a useful and easy to find place in your online classroom for students.

Your syllabus – your first tool in your toolbox
Okay, so look at your syllabus. How do you naturally organize your course? By weeks or by topics? By weeks with topics? By projects? Do you scaffold your learning throughout the semester, or do you cover one topic and move on to the next – a skills mastery type of learning?

Let’s introduce concept mapping: look at your course, how you chunk your information, and the assignments you associate with each “chunk”. Map it out – break out a blank piece of paper and either “cluster” chart your info or flowchart it.
Why? Your course structure is the first building block in creating your course. You’ve a decision to make – how you chunk your content information for delivery.

As the post goes on to point out, choosing your course layout based on your syllabus is an easy way to help you organize your course. Starting here will let you build content in a very organized fashion later (so there are no jumbled topics or weeks that confuse your students).

Further along in the post the author points out the easy to use features such as the forum, chat and assignments and how they can be easily translated from your syllabus to your digital classroom.

While you're there, check out another great post: Enhance your Face to Face (f2f) Instruction

Enjoy the post (and your summer).