Simple Syllabus: Beneficial for Everyone
Simple Syllabus is a new academic application provided by the Office of eCampus. This tool will soon serve all UMMC schools as a centralized course syllabus creation and maintenance platform. The Office of eCampus is working with school representatives to determine syllabus requirements to help ensure the template design is appropriate and appealing to all schools.
Template designs are underway and are incorporating the requirements collected from the schools. Each syllabus is divided into institutional, school, and course-specific content sections. Appropriate personnel will have in-app permissions assigned to allow edit access to the required sections. For example, some SOM-Office of Medical Education staff will be permitted to edit School of Medicine content. Course directors or their representatives will have permission to edit the course-specific content for their courses.
Workflows in Simple Syllabus will assign tasks to users to ensure each syllabus is created or updated, reviewed, and approved in a timely manner. Once approved, integrations with Canvas ensure the information is available within the courses. Term dates added to Simple Syllabus are used to identify the current version and historical versions.
As mentioned earlier, integrations are being defined and set up between Canvas and Simple Syllabus. These will be used to ensure data is consistent from app to app. Subaccounts, courses, sections, and enrollments will be sent to Simple Syllabus from Canvas. The completed syllabus will be added to the Canvas courses in a return integration. Additional data, such as Canvas assignments with due dates, will be available and recorded in the syllabus.
Faculty and students will have a consistent and clearly presented course syllabus. These benefits are obvious. However, the additional benefit is the versioning and historical record of course syllabi. These are essential pieces for a successful accreditation review. Institutional, school, and even program accreditations, if required, will find this application a valuable addition to the available tools.
The Office of eCampus and the Academic Technology team in DIS continue to partner in our effort to deliver valuable learning tools for our academic mission at UMMC. Watch for more information on Simple Syllabus and other new additions coming soon.