Canvas Course Syllabi Can Now Be Publicly Viewable

Yes, check it out– here’s my Fall BTS 161 Syllabus:

https://bc.instructure.com/courses/1046777/assignments/syllabus

This is very cool. I have had prospective students ask for my class syllabi, and I’ve had to email old ones to them. Also, now my department can point to these syllabus pages.

However– one thing I do NOT like about the way Canvas does this: it shows all the assignments. Why do I not like this? Well, the assignments are automatically drawn from the Canvas course, and I use Canvas for assignments. What if one of my peers does NOT use Canvas for assignments? The public will think that HER class is “easier” than mine because she has no (or fewer) assignments, and register for that other class rather than mine. NOT COOL. Canvas should NOT show assignments on the public syllabus page. I’m cool showing assignments to the students, just not to the public.

Another change coming to Canvas’ Syllabus tool: it will be a *form* that instructors can just type their own class data into. This form will include fields for “Instructor Info,” “Course Description,” “Required Materials,” etc., *and* it will automatically drop in all the official college boilerplate text that instructors currently have to manually drop in ourselves.

Change. The only consistency…

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