Synopsis
Section syllabi, also called live syllabi, are the syllabi that instructors and students engage with during the term that a given course is offered. Section syllabi may also be the syllabi that are reviewed for accreditation purposes. These syllabi likely contain item content inherited from their associated course templates, but there are other item categories that must be populated and reviewed for each specific course section.
When it comes to administering section syllabi, there are several different ways to provision item content and assign group permissions, and it is expected that your institution will likely use a combination of the options depending on your contexts. You can choose whatever combination of options best suits your institution’s needs.
Key Terms
- Course: the artifact in Concourse that contains the syllabus.
- Syllabus: the main resource in a course in Concourse; the syllabus can be either structured or unstructured and contains course content, language, and policies.
- Template: a course whose syllabus contains standard item content that will be cloned (i.e., copied) into non-template (i.e., live/section) syllabi; instructors and students are typically not registered to templates.
- Section syllabus: a course in Concourse that matches a unique section offering at your institution; also called live or non-template syllabus. The non-template syllabus usually contains information cloned from a template. Instructors and students are typically registered to non-templates.
- Domain users: users with permission to administer, edit, audit, or report upon all courses/syllabi in an entire domain. These users are typically academic leaders who are familiar with the syllabus language and requirements for entire departments, programs, or other organizational units.
- Managers: a user group registered to specific courses within a domain; users assigned to the Manager role are able to access, edit, and audit assigned syllabi.
- Developers: a user group registered to specific courses within a domain; users assigned to the Developer role are able to access and edit assigned syllabi.
- End users: typically students, instructors, and other syllabus managers. End users typically engage with syllabi individually and do not need large-scale access to system data for management or reporting purposes.
- Domain Permissions: the permission to view, manage, report upon, and/or modify syllabi for entire domains; four types of domain permissions are available: administer, edit, audit, and report.
- Registration Feed: a data feed that registers users to courses in a specific role; Registration Feeds are an option to add users to courses as Managers if they cannot be enrolled in the appropriate role via the LMS.
Important to this Decision
Before making decisions about how your institution uses Concourse, you should consider how stakeholders, systems, timelines, and other factors are impacted. Review the important elements below to be better prepared to make changes to your Concourse configuration or implementation.
Academic leaders and staff whose work is related to accreditation and compliance or the syllabus development process should be consulted when making this decision. It’s also a good idea to consult academic stakeholders who are familiar with the workload expectations of personnel at your institution. Although it may seem like one option for template administration is a good fit for your institution, you should consult with academic leaders to confirm that such a distribution of template administration duties is allowable and appropriate given the relevant personnel’s scope of responsibilities or contractual requirements.
How you administer section syllabi determines how different user groups can access and edit these syllabi and how item content is populated, modified, and reviewed. Students are enrolled in section syllabi, so the decisions you make at this level will directly impact the student experience.
This decision is typically made during the implementation phase, but your method may change over time as your institution’s needs change. If your institution will change your method of administering section syllabi, we recommend that you inform and train all relevant personnel far in advance of deployment so that end users adjust to the changes more smoothly.
- If your institution processes Item Feeds:
- Data is queried from the SIS to generate Item Feeds. Many system admins use SQL to collect the data and generate feed files.
- Feeds can be processed manually by uploading a correctly-formatted .txt file to Concourse; feeds can also be automated with the use of tools like PowerShell.
- If your institution manually edits syllabus items:
- All users in editing roles receive training on adding and editing syllabus item content in the Concourse interface. Users may generate content in the interface or paste in content from other sources (e.g., Word/Docs, a shared drive, a catalog, website).
- Depending on the user’s role and your institution’s integrations, users may access Concourse via the LMS or SSO portal.
- Some level of manual intervention is expected on section syllabi. To ensure that Instructors, Managers, and Developers have appropriate access, set Group Permissions. You can set Initial Group Permissions so that all new syllabi and items in your system adhere to your chosen settings, or you can set Group Permissions en Masse to update group permissions for current and past courses.
- If your institution opts to administer section syllabi with Managers or Developers, you will likely need to process Registration Feeds to register these users to the correct courses with appropriate access.
- If your institution opts to populate certain items on section syllabi via feed, you should work with your IT staff to implement Item Feeds. Item Feeds can be automated or processed manually.
You should choose the combination of approaches that best meet your institution’s needs and available resources as well as internal and external requirements. We recommend you choose the combination of approaches that will result in the most consistent, accurate experience for end users. This may mean using Items Feeds to provision content that matches the SIS, assigning Managers to populate some syllabus content, and tasking Instructors with populating remaining syllabus items. Managers may play a role in quality assurance, or you may have a separate
audit process.
Configuration Options
Your institution’s approach to administering section syllabi will be informed by a number of factors, including the data available in the SIS, the internal and external requirements for uniform language, and the bandwidth of your syllabus editors and reviewers. You can expect to use one or more of the options below for administering your section syllabi. Options for administering section syllabi include:
- Option A: Administer Section Syllabi with Instructors
- Option B: Administer Section Syllabi with Managers
- Option C: Administer Section Syllabi with Developers
- Option D: Administer Section Syllabi with Item Feeds
Since each of these options would be used to manage designated syllabus items (e.g., Items Feeds populate Meeting Times, Instructors modify Deliverables), all options can be used simultaneously in order to minimize the section syllabus development timeline. If the choices below don’t fit your needs, reach out to Client Services for assistance.
- Approach: During implementation, your LMS will be integrated with Concourse, and the integration settings usually include a component to automatically register Instructors for their Concourse courses. Determine which items Instructors will edit on section syllabi, and ensure that Initial Group Permissions reflect these choices. Prepare messaging and training to ensure Instructors understand and can meet editing expectations. It’s important to implement a review or audit process to ensure that section syllabi meet internal and external requirements for completion and accuracy; determine which users will review section syllabi, typically Domain Auditors or Managers, and provide support so that they can generate reports and recommendations for section syllabi.
- Better For: This option is used by most Concourse institutions. The number of items that Instructors can edit varies based on institutional contexts, but Instructors are typically tasked with modifying some portion of their live syllabi.
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Administering Section Syllabi with Instructors: Instructors know the intricacies of their courses and can populate syllabi to reflect the way their courses are actually taught; other users, like Managers and Developers, usually do not have this same level of familiarity with individual section offerings. On the other hand, Instructors typically have significant workloads and may find it onerous to learn and use another ed tech tool; gaining faculty investment can be a delicate process. Manual input methods are more prone to error than automated input methods, so a review process is crucial to ensuring the success of this approach.
- Effort: The time and effort required for any human-driven process is significant. With this approach, however, the majority of effort is spent on training and supporting Instructors before and during the syllabus modification period, with additional effort expended to review content upon completion; you can expect the training, editing, and review processes to take several weeks, so it’s crucial to provide Instructors with ample time prior to the start of each term. If your institution opts to auto-register users to Concourse courses via our middleware tool, then there is no effort expended to match Instructors with their syllabi via Registration Feed.
- Approach: Course Managers must be identified and matched with appropriate section syllabi via Registration Feed. Work with academic leaders to identify Managers, and work with IT staff to develop Registration Feeds to match these personnel with the appropriate Concourse courses. Determine which items Managers will edit on section syllabi, and ensure that Initial Group Permissions reflect these choices. Prepare messaging and training to ensure Managers understand and can meet editing expectations. It’s important to implement a review or audit process to ensure that section syllabi meet internal and external requirements for completion and accuracy; train Managers on the Audit feature if applicable. If Managers will participate in the audit process, we recommend that they not audit the items they are responsible for modifying. In other words, they can audit syllabus items populated by Developers or Instructors, but Domain Auditors should be assigned to audit syllabus items populated by Managers.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that have program leaders, instructional designers, and/or other support staff who are tasked with curriculum development. These institutions typically also have a large amount of standardized content that should appear on section syllabi.
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Administering Section Syllabi with Managers: Course Managers are typically familiar with course-specific content that aligns with accreditation and/or legislative requirements, so there is a high degree of consistency in section syllabi that Managers administer. Managers are likely not as familiar with any unique themes or approaches to the section like Instructors are, so they cannot add any of the unique course elements that Instructors would be able to do. Managers are able to assist with both the editing and auditing processes, so their duties can be assigned as needed. Manual input methods are more prone to error than automated input methods, so a review process is crucial to ensuring the success of this approach.
- Effort: The time and effort required for any human-driven process is significant. With this approach, the majority of effort is spent on training and supporting Course Managers through the syllabus development process. Managers may participate in modifying or editing section syllabi as your institution needs; we recommend not having Managers edit and audit the same syllabus set. Managers do need to be matched with syllabi via Registration Feed, so your IT personnel and SIS administrator will need to work together to develop a feed file generation process before automated feed processing can be implemented.
- Approach: Developers must be identified and matched with appropriate section syllabi via Registration Feed. Work with academic leaders to identify Developers, and work with IT staff to develop Registration Feeds to match these personnel with the appropriate Concourse courses. Determine which items Developers will edit on section syllabi, and ensure that Initial Group Permissions reflect these choices. Prepare messaging and training to ensure Developers understand and can meet editing expectations. It’s important to implement a review or audit process to ensure that section syllabi meet internal and external requirements for completion and accuracy.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that have program leaders, instructional designers, and/or other support staff who are tasked with curriculum development. These institutions typically also have a large amount of standardized content that should appear on section syllabi.
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Administering Section Syllabi with Developers: Developers are typically familiar with course-specific content that aligns with accreditation and/or legislative requirements, so there is a high degree of consistency in section syllabi that Developers administer. Developers are likely not as familiar with any unique themes or approaches to the section like Instructors are, so they cannot add any of the unique course elements that Instructors would be able to do. Developers are only able to assist with the editing processes, so another user should be assigned to review section syllabi after Developers complete editing.
- Effort: The time and effort required for any human-driven process is significant. With this approach, the majority of effort is spent on training and supporting Developers through the syllabus development process. Developers may participate in modifying or editing section syllabi as your institution needs, but since they are not able to audit syllabi, your institution will need to implement an audit or quality assurance process with other personnel; typically, Domain Auditors fill this need. Developers do need to be matched with syllabi via Registration Feed, so your IT personnel and SIS administrator will need to work together to develop a feed file generation process before automated feed processing can be implemented.
- Approach: For automated feed processing, a member of your institution’s IT staff writes a generation script (SQL is often used for this purpose) to create Item files from data in your Student Information System; the Item Feed is then transmitted to Concourse via POST over HTTPS. Once feeds are confirmed to create item content as expected, this process can be automated with PowerShell or other job scheduling software. Feed files can be created manually, but this approach is not recommended for Item Feeds due to the required HTML formatting of item content in feed data fields and the high likelihood of error. Item Feeds are typically processed daily so that any updates to course data in the SIS can be added to your Concourse system in a timely manner. Item Feeds should be processed after section syllabi have been created to reduce errors.
- Better For: This approach is used most often by institutions that keep updated, consistent course data, such as Meeting Times and Instructor Contact Information, collected in a single platform (source of truth) that can be queried to generate a feed file. The processing of Item Feeds requires the support of your IT team, so this approach is more successful for institutions whose IT staff have the bandwidth and ability to support automated feed processing.
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Processing Item Feeds: The benefits of processing Item Feeds include a high degree of data consistency and the ability to quickly update content to match other systems. Item Feeds reduce the risk of human error with data entry and ensure that syllabus content matches your SIS and other systems exactly. Additionally, when information in the source of truth changes, automated feeds can push updated content to syllabus items nearly immediately without a lot of manual effort. A limitation of Item Feeds is that they only populate and synchronize item content and cannot be used to provision sub-items. If your institution has uniform sub-item content that should appear in syllabi, that content should be added manually to templates, where it will cascade down to linked templates and eventually into non-templates.
- Effort: After the initial development process, using Item Feeds requires little manual intervention. It is a good idea to review feed generation and formatting practices as part of regular system maintenance to ensure that items are being populated and updated as expected. We recommend that feed files be generated and processed manually at first to ensure accuracy of data.
Post-Decision Changes
Your institution’s needs may change over time and you may need to make changes to your configuration settings. In other words, the configuration decisions you make during the implementation phase might not be as efficient five or ten years afterward. Review the guidance below to better understand how changing this particular decision may affect your Concourse system or deployment in the future.
Since section syllabi are typically administered immediately before and during the term they are offered, your institution is able to make changes to the way you administer section syllabi without significant interruption or risk of data loss. We recommend that you regularly discuss how permissions will be distributed and items will be populated in the upcoming term. If changes are needed to the current process, you should:
- Inform all editing roles (Instructors, Managers, Developers) what items they are expected to edit in the upcoming term and what the standards are.
- Update training materials as needed to support Instructors, Managers, and Developers.
- Update Initial Group Permissions if needed so that editing roles can only edit the appropriate items in syllabi that haven’t been created yet in your system.
- If applicable, ensure Item Feeds are being generated to populate the appropriate items for the upcoming term.
- If applicable, ensure Registration Feeds are being generated to enroll Managers and Developers to the appropriate courses for the upcoming term.
Before making a decision about administering section syllabi, you should be familiar with some related issues and contexts. See the following articles for more information:
- Learn about the Relationship between Templates, Courses, and Sections.
- Check out our Instructor Training Templates to get an idea of how Concourse can support your end users, whether they are populating every syllabus item or just a few.
Tell Us About Your Experience
Did this article answer your question? If you made a decision like this for your Concourse instance, let us know how it turned out. If we missed something in this article or if you have a question that isn’t addressed in our Knowledge Base, let us know how we can help by reaching out to
support@campusconcourse.com.