Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Shannon Barnes -
Number of replies: 11

Hello:

My colleagues and I are in the early stages of upgrading to Moodle 4.1, and we would like for every course to have a section to which faculty upload their syllabus. Is this even possible in Moodle? If not, is there some alternative others have created?

The inspiration for this is Canvas, as there's a syllabus section automatically built into every course.


Thanks in advance!

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In reply to Shannon Barnes

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Mary Cooch -
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Hello Shannon. I am just moving your post to the Teaching with Moodle forum as it is better suited there. I think there is no specific section but you could simply upload it into the top section 'General' if you wanted to.
In reply to Shannon Barnes

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Rick Jerz -
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When I saw the topic of your post, I immediately thought "this person is coming from Canvas." Yes, Canvas has a "syllabus" feature. However, this is Canvas' view of what a syllabus looks like to them (and maybe more like what I would call a table of contents). At my school, no instructor used this Canvas "syllabus" because it never match any "traditional" view of what a college syllabus should look like. Well, be that as it may, it's Canvas.

No, Moodle doesn't have that kind of feature. But you have many alternatives available.

1) Expanding on what Mary posted, you could use Moodle's "File" resource and attach the syllabus as a PDF, Word, or whatever filetype format.
2) You could use a Forum, somewhat like the File resource, but a forum would allow students to ask questions about the syllabus.
3) You could keep all syllabi on your university website, then use a Moodle URL to link to it.

In my case, I kind of do the #3 suggestion. However, my syllabus is in HTML, as a web page. My school always wanted syllabi to be MS Word files, but I argued that an HTML file was better for many reasons, so I went against the wave. Students never complained, either. I could then reference my syllabi anywhere, such as "MBA8150 Syllabus," and I knew that it would be correct because I managed it in one central location. Also, since it is a web page, I don't have to worry about how students will open it; it just appears on a new tab. However, this method (using the Internet as intended) seemed to be beyond the scope and ability of most college professors.  😑
 
Anyway, in different LMSs you often need to do things differently.  Below is a screenshot showing how students see my syllabus in Moodle 4.1.  This "Course Administration Items" section always shows at the top of my course.
 
Attachment Ricks Syllabus Example.jpg
In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Rick Jerz -
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To make this discussion more complete, I am attaching an example of a Canvas syllabus (from someone's experimental course). You can see that Canvas provides the "Course Summary," I believe automatically, which in my world is not a "syllabus," but perhaps a "course calendar" of events. In this example, you can see that the instructor is trying to link to their university's website for the "real" syllabus, as HTML. (The link doesn't yet work, however.)
Attachment Canvas Syllabus Example Demo.jpg
In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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In other words, the "Canvas syllabus" is neither your syllabus nor my syllabus. Ha, ha, ha!

More seriously, this reminds me a commercial theme once I saw. It displays the visitor an auto-generated structure of the course. Can't remember its name. There was a caveat though. The registered participants don't see it, they are taken straight to the course home page.
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Rick Jerz -
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I could never figure out why anyone would ever think that the Course Summary, as shown, is anywhere close to a real syllabus. But this is how it has been for probably 6-8 years. Maybe some programmers who never took a course that had a syllabus created this thing.
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In reply to Shannon Barnes

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Nathan Lind -
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Hi Shannon,
Another cool thing about Moodle is, if you drag in a file called Syllabus, whether a Word docx or a PDF, then you type the word 'syllabus' anywhere in the Moodle course (a label, now called Text and Media. or on a Moodle page, or in the directions of an assignment), Moodle will autolink to the actual syllabus file. Super convenient.
This also works well for linking to other commonly used resources, including having a Moodle page called "Schedule" or "Forum posting directions" to which you can refer simply by name.
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In reply to Nathan Lind

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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I also make use of this feature. BTW, this is a filter which needs to be activated. Ref. Activity_names_auto-linking_filter

But it is not everybody likes this. There are some teachers whose exercises are all called Exercise!
big grin
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Rick Jerz -
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You are correct, Visvanath. I have found that having auto-linking turned on created more harm than good, so I disabled it. To each their own.
In reply to Shannon Barnes

Re: Specific Section for Syllabus in Moodle 4.1?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Yet another possibility is to restore a course template when you create a new course. You can do it manually by Course_restore or use the additional plug-in https://moodle.org/plugins/local_course_templates.

This solution is more general in the sense that you can extend it to make your site more "Canvas-like" - by adding more features like the syllabus to the template.
wink