Create an Online Syllabus

Creating an Online Syllabus

Putting your syllabus online is the first step in getting an entire course online. Having the syllabus online means that your students have access to their assignments anytime, anywhere. At Bryn Mawr, there are two places to put your syllabus online: in Blackboard or on the Bryn Mawr web site. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. We’ll discuss both methods below.

Using the web for course materials

If you’ve never put anything on the web at Bryn Mawr before, you will need to establish a web account. To do so, e-mail the help desk and explain that you need an account for course pages. In most cases, your account will be located within your department site. You will be given a username and password (usually the same as your e-mail password) for your account and will be told where the directory for your account is located on the server. For more information about how this works, see the tip sheet on Unix or servers.

Once you have an account, you need to create the syllabus. You have many options. If you know how to write in html, you may simply use a text editor and code your entire syllabus that way. Most people, however, use an html editor, which allows you to type as you would in a word processor, but which generates a page that is readable by a web browser.

One of the simplest html editors is Netscape’s composer, which is included with the browser. If you don’t have Netscape, download it for free here. To open composer, click the icon at the bottom of the Netscape screen. You will then see a blank composer screen (This may look different on windows). You may begin typing just as you would in a word processor. The icons at the top of the page are very similar to the ones you would find in a word processor. They allow you to format your text, and add images and links. To learn more about creating web pages in Composer, see the tutorial page.

Once you have the syllabus created in Netscape, you will need to upload the page to the server. You can do this using and ftp (file transfer protocol) program like WS-FTP, Secure FTP (for Windows) or Fetch or the Terminal (for Macs).

Dreamweaver is another html editor that can be used to create a syllabus. It works much the same way that Netscape does, but has many more features and is capable of creating much more complex web pages. For more information, see our Dreamweaver page.

Putting a Syllabus in Blackboard

The concept for putting a syllabus online is the same whether your syllabus is on the web or in Blackboard. You are still putting a document onto a web server. In Blackboard, you have the option of putting your syllabus in several different formats. I will discuss the pros and cons and how-tos for several formats.

Word Documents: If you already have your syllabus as a word document, you can simply upload the file to Blackboard by following the instructions for uploading. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to recreate your syllabus in a different format and you may feel more comfortable using word. The disadvantages are many. Your syllabus will not display within Blackboard. Your students will have to download it and view or print it on their own. It’s possible that they may not have Microsoft Word (though it is available in most of the labs on campus). And it is a static document that doesn’t add much to your online course (more on that later).

PDF (Portable Document Format): Although this format is readable by more people, it has some of the same problems as using word documents: lack of internal display and being static.

HTML or Web format: This is (in my opinion), the best option for putting a syllabus into Blackboard. Obviously, you will have to create an html file first (follow directions on the previous page). When you’re ready to put the syllabus into Blackboard, there are two ways to do this. One is to simply attach the html file, which will create a link to the file that will dispay within the Blackboard course.

To do this, follow the steps below:

  1. Log in to Blackboard and enter the appropriate course.
  2. Select Control Panel in the bottom left-hand corner.
  3. Select the appropriate content area or create a new one.
  4. Click on “Add Item,” the first option.
  5. In the first section, choose or type in a name for the syllabus.
  6. Scroll down to the section section and click the “Browse” button.
  7. Select your file and click enter. Unless the file is an image, video, sound or Flash file, your only option is to create a link, which is selected by default.
  8. Students can then click the link and still navigate to other areas of the Blackboard course.

Another option is to embed the html code into Blackboard. To do this, follow steps 1-5 above. Instead of selecting a file, you will be pasting html code into the text box.

  1. Open your html file in a browser or in a text editor.
  2. If you use a browser, view the source of the page. In a text editor, you will already be viewing the source.
  3. Select all of the code and copy it.
  1. Place your cursor in the text box in Blackboard and paste the code.
  2. Select the HTML option.
  3. When you choose this option, students will see the page when they click on the menu item, thus eliminating one click from their navigation.

(click on image for larger view)

One final option: Type or paste text into the text box. If you have a word or text file that you’ve already created, you can copy and paste just as you would for an html file. You may lose some formatting but using the “Smart Text” option, you can add bold and italics much the same way as you would in a word processor. If you’re starting from scratch, you can simply type in your information in the text box. Either option will display the same way as the html option above.

One advantage of putting a syllabus online is that you can link to other things–either within the course or to other sites on the Internet.