Teaching a Course

Your syllabus serves as a roadmap and living agreement between you and your students. To create an effective syllabus, align the main components of your course—learning objectives, assessments, and instructional strategies. Faculty should check with their academic unit, as many have school or program-specific templates for syllabi. Here’s how you might approach building your syllabus:

• Course Expectations: Clear and consistent communication of course expectations fosters a structured and transparent learning environment. Your syllabus serves as the foundational contract, outlining objectives, assignments, and assessments, and ensures everyone is on the same page from the start.
• Grading Policies: Clear and transparent grading policies ensure that assessments accurately reflect student learning and align with course objectives. Consistent grading, supported by detailed rubrics and clear communication, helps students understand expectations and minimizes confusion.
• Semester Schedule: Use the academic calendar to map out lectures, assignments, and exams for the semester. A well-organized schedule helps manage workloads for both you and your students, contributing to a balanced and productive learning experience.
• Academic Integrity: Uphold academic integrity by integrating guidelines into your syllabus and course discussions. This fosters a culture of honesty and responsibility, encouraging ethical behavior essential to students' academic and professional growth.
• Final Exam Schedule: Ensure your final assessments are aligned with university guidelines, minimizing conflicts and reducing stress. Proper exam scheduling supports students in demonstrating their learning effectively and minimizes cognitive overload.

Syllabus Resources

The Office of the University Provost (OUP) and University Registrar Services (URS) have several resources to inform your syllabus:

• Syllabus Guidelines
• Definitions and Glossary related to courses and curriculum
• Grading Policies
• Semester Schedule
• Academic Integrity
• Final Exam Schedule
   

Leveraging the right tools can significantly enhance your teaching efficiency and student engagement. Canvas is ASU’s primary Learning Management System (LMS), offering a robust platform for managing course content, assessments, and student interactions. With features that support seamless integration of multimedia, assignment tracking, and communication, Canvas is your go-to tool for delivering a cohesive and engaging course experience.

Google Workspace offers a suite of tools such as Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive, all of which integrate seamlessly with Canvas. These tools facilitate real-time collaboration, making group projects and course management more streamlined and interactive. Utilizing these tools enhances both in-person and online learning by supporting cooperative learning theory, where students learn by working together to achieve shared goals.

Zoom enables you to conduct live, interactive sessions and office hours, maintaining direct student engagement in both synchronous and asynchronous learning environments. By utilizing Zoom’s features like breakout rooms and polls, you can create an interactive and participatory learning experience that aligns with the principles of active learning, where students are actively involved in the learning process rather than passively receiving information.
 

Creating an inclusive learning environment is crucial for ensuring that all students, regardless of their abilities, have equitable access to your course content. Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services (SAILS) is your partner in ensuring that your course materials meet accessibility standards. By working with SAILS, you can proactively address potential barriers to learning and create a more inclusive classroom environment.  

The Ally tool within Canvas is a powerful resource for evaluating and enhancing the accessibility of your course materials. Ally provides feedback on the accessibility of your content and offers suggestions for improvement, ensuring that all students can fully participate in your course. Incorporating accessibility considerations from the start also reduces the need for retroactive adjustments, saving you time and ensuring a more seamless learning experience.

Accessibility within Canvas is about more than just meeting legal requirements; it’s about creating a learning environment where all students can succeed. By following best practices, such as providing alternative text for images and using descriptive hyperlinks, you ensure that your course materials are accessible to students with disabilities, thereby fostering an inclusive and supportive learning environment.
 

Engagement is a critical factor in student success, directly influencing their motivation, understanding, and retention of course material. When students are actively involved in their learning, they are more likely to develop a deeper understanding of the content, participate in meaningful discussions, and apply their knowledge in practical settings (Wong, Z. Y., Liem, G. A. D., Chan, M., & Datu, J. A. D. (2024). Engagement transforms passive learning into an interactive experience, where students are not just recipients of information but active contributors to their educational journey.

To facilitate this level of engagement, a variety of tools are available to help you create an interactive and dynamic learning environment in your courses. These tools support real-time communication, collaborative learning, peer-to-peer interaction, and active learning strategies. Don’t get overwhelmed with all these tools; we recommend you only select one tool to promote engagement in your course to prevent confusion among your students.

• Slack: Facilitate real-time communication and collaboration among students, fostering an interactive learning environment.
• EdDiscussion: Promote active discussions and problem-solving with this interactive discussion tool.
• InScribe: Support peer-to-peer learning and build a growing library of course resources.
• Yellowdig: Engage students with a gradable discussion forum integrated with the Canvas Gradebook.
• iClicker: Promote active learning through Student Response Systems (SRS) with tools for polling, quizzing, and grading.
   

The use of multimedia in education has a profound impact on student learning, offering diverse ways to present complex concepts and cater to various learning preferences (Mayer, 2002). Multimedia elements such as videos, audio, images, and interactive content can transform a traditional learning experience into a dynamic and engaging one, making it easier for students to grasp and retain information.

Multimedia encourages active learning by requiring students to engage with the content, whether through interactive videos, narrated screencasts, or digital portfolios. Active engagement is a key factor in deep learning, as it requires students to interact with the material, apply their knowledge, and reflect on their learning experiences (Mayer, 2002).

PlayPosit enables you to make your videos interactive by embedding quizzes, polls, and other activities. This tool promotes active engagement by requiring students to interact with the content, which aligns with constructivist learning theory, where learners actively construct their own understanding through experience.

ASU Portfolio provides a platform for students to showcase their projects, achievements, and skills in a dynamic and engaging way. Encouraging students to create digital portfolios supports reflective practice, allowing them to track their progress and articulate their learning journey.

MediaPlus allows you to manage and embed multimedia content—videos, audio, and more—directly in Canvas. By using multimedia, you can cater to different learning needs, supporting multiple intelligences theory, which suggests that students have different strengths and ways of processing information. MediaPlus enables you to create a rich and varied learning experience that engages all students.
 

Maintaining academic integrity is essential to upholding the credibility of your course and the university. 

HonorLock is a proctoring tool that monitors online assessments, ensuring students adhere to academic integrity standards. This tool is useful for fully online ASU iCourses and oCourses, where traditional proctoring methods may not be feasible.

Respondus is another tool that helps deter cheating by restricting access to other programs during assessments. You can create a secure testing environment that upholds the principles of fairness and honesty, which are fundamental to the academic enterprise.

For any questions about proctoring services, you can connect with proctoring@asu.edu. Establishing a strong foundation of academic integrity in your course protects the integrity of your assessments and fosters a culture of trust and responsibility among your students.
 

ASU’s library resources are valuable for both you and your students. Library Tutorials provide students with guides on navigating the research process, from finding sources to citations. These tutorials help students develop essential research skills, which can be beneficial for academic success.

Library Guides offer access to over 700 discipline-specific resources to support your teaching. Whether you’re looking for subject-specific databases, research tools, or instructional materials, the library guides can help you find the resources you need to enhance your course.

For quick, expert help with research or library-related questions, you can use the Ask a Librarian service. This service provides support via chat, email, or text, ensuring that you and your students have access to the information you need when you need it.

By integrating these resources into your course, you empower your students to become independent learners and critical thinkers, which is the ultimate goal of higher education.