Option 1: Applying Your Learning to Your Syllabus

The readings from this course were selected to give you an introductory understanding of blended learning and some effective strategies for pivoting your courses to online. Drawing on the readings from day 1 (or if you wish, any other resources that you found helpful), identify up to four specific strategies or changes that you’d like to integrate to your course.

  1. Syllabus integration/notes: Open your existing course syllabus and do a first read-through while keeping in mind your chosen changes/strategies for blended learning. Briefly markdown in your syllabus where/how you can change the syllabus to reflect specific strategies. For example, Rule #4 in “10 Simple Rules for…” (Nordmann et al., 2020) suggests that you “Set and communicate clear expectations about engagement”. In the first read-through of your syllabus, markdown where you might include that component. 

  2. Build out the changes: Now that you have a big picture sense of where you might edit or add to your syllabus, go back through your syllabus and begin to build out some of the changes. For example, following Nordmann et al.’s (2020) “Rule #4” about communicating expectations, you may wish to write up a section of your syllabus called “Engagement Expectations,” which gives explicit instructions and outlines expectations.
     
  3. Keep track: Jot down a few notes about the changes and additions you’ve made on Day 4. In an ongoing document that you will add to for each of the 4 days, jot down a few bullet points of what you have changed in your syllabus (so you can share on Day 5 with your peers). 

*If you do not have a syllabus to build out, or if you are not working on a specific course, you may choose "Option 2: Open Mini-Project" and take this time to work on other aspects: (e.g. Your Canvas course, dive deeper into other components, find online resources, create a prototype or a one-week section of your course in detail).