[ARCHIVED] What can the Syllabus tool do in K-12?

[Bobby2]

Fellow K-12ers, I am curious about how you use the 'Syllabus' section of Canvas. do you use it at all? Is it more of a secondary, tertiary tool?

Many thanks in anticipation. k_12 syllabus tool

[thompsli]

I hide the syllabus from view. I have a "Course Information" Module at the top of my Modules page with Pages for things like "Grading Policy", "How to be an Online Math Student", "Academic Integrity and the Online Math Student", "How to turn in an assignment as a Google Doc", "How to schedule an appointment in the Canvas Calendar", and other things that would generally be addressed in the "policies and procedures" part of a syllabus.

I then have a Module for each week in the course and put the various assignments and activities in there so students can keep track of what they are expected to do each week, with Module Requirements so they get green checkmarks as they finish their tasks for the week. (Deadlines for most of those assignments also show up in their To-Do list and Calendar, but I tell students they need to visit the Modules page for the whole picture since not everything shows up in their To-Do list - Canvas doesn't have a way to push certain types of things to their To-Do list, unfortunately.)

I teach 7th-12th grade math in a mostly-online context where I'll see students a few times a year for exams, and student can choose to come in during my office hours if they want in-person help. Since Canvas is my main point of contact with students, I try to be very, very clear about what they need to do in my class each week.

[Bobby2]

@Linnea that's so helpful. Many thanks. I didn't know you could hide things!

[Stef_retired]

Definitely,  @Bobby2 ‌: customizing the navigation is powerful functionality. The links you'll want to show and hide depend on your subject matter, content, and audience, but in my courses I always hid everything except the course home page (which was set as the Syllabus page), Modules, and Announcements, thereby streamlining and simplifying the navigation pathway for students. I put everything my students would need in Modules, and made an extra link to Modules on the course home page to make sure they had several ways to access that critical pathway. Have a look at How do I reorder and hide Course Navigation links?‌

[Bobby2]

This is super helpful. Thanks Stefanie

[MattHanes]

We encourage and train our staff to use the Syllabus page in place of whatever they were using for a teacher webpage. The great thing about the Syllabus page is that it can be made public (no sign-in required) while the rest of the content can remain private. We have a few schools that will ask their teachers to update their syllabus pages weekly with the activities for that week. The links to those syllabus pages are sent to the school's webmaster who posts the links on the Staff page of the school website. It makes it very easy for parents to find out what is going on in the class with a simple google search for the school. Not all parents are going to take the time to sign-up for a Canvas account so this removes that hurdle.

[KristinL]

Hi!

Thank you  @Bobby2  for submitting this question! Based on your inquiry, I feel that this is a better discussion than a question that has a single “correct” answer. However, because another Community member has clicked the “I also have this question!” button, I am unable to convert it to a discussion for an ongoing conversation.

Because it is my goal to clean up the K-12 space before the end of 2018 so only the only open questions are those that are still relevant!

With that goal in mind, I am going to mark this question as “Assumed Answered” so it is removed from the list. The status will not prevent Community members from contributing and continuing this conversation!

Community Onward,

Kristin