Configuration Options: Structured versus Unstructured Syllabi
Synopsis
Concourse systems can be set up to support either structured or unstructured syllabi. This is a system-wide configuration and is consistent for all courses within a single system. Structured syllabi use an editing interface that is consistent across your institution to input content into uniform syllabi; structured syllabi support consistent data, user experience, and reporting. Unstructured syllabi allow users to upload a file that users either view as a PDF or download in its original format. Both options support improved syllabus management at your institution.
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.
- Non-template: a course in Concourse that matches a unique section offering at your institution; the non-template syllabus usually contains information cloned from a template. Instructors and students are typically registered to non-templates.
- Item: a category of related content in a syllabus; there are twelve default items in a Concourse syllabus.
- Feed: a data file that is used to migrate information from external systems to Concourse; feeds can be automated or processed manually.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
Prior to making this decision, you should consult your institution’s Registrar, staff from Academic Affairs, personnel whose work is related to accreditation or compliance, and any other stakeholders whose work is related to syllabus or curriculum development.
Whether you implement structured or unstructured syllabi depends on many factors:
- Implementation runway: the implementation process is roughly six weeks for unstructured systems and twelve weeks for structured systems.
- Data available: if syllabus content such as course descriptions, outcomes, materials, etc., are readily available in other systems, it can be pushed to structured Concourse systems quickly and easily. If syllabus content is not readily available in other systems, existing syllabus files can be uploaded en masse to unstructured systems.
- Syllabus content requirements: if your institution has rigorous standards for content that must appear across all syllabi, structured systems support the creation of templates that can be used to ensure accuracy of content. If your institution requires the publication of syllabi but has fewer requirements about standardized language, an unstructured system is a quick way to make syllabi available to users.
- Accreditation and legislative compliance: both structured and unstructured systems make it easy for users to search for and access syllabi in your system to meet external requirements.
This decision is typically made during the implementation phase before any other parts of your Concourse system are set up. It is not uncommon for Concourse institutions to shift from unstructured to structured systems after a few years to improve reporting and compliance.
- A System Admin can manually process course feeds to create courses in unstructured Concourse systems; System Admins or IT staff can automate the processing of numerous feeds to create courses and populate syllabi in structured systems.
- If your institution stores course data in the SIS or a catalog tool, those tools can be queried to generate feed files to populate structured Concourse systems, saving lots of time and effort in the syllabus development process.
- Concourse institutions that use unstructured systems can integrate Concourse with their LMS and users can access through their LMS course shells; Concourse institutions that use structured systems can integrate Concourse with their LMS or Single Sign-On portal to allow multiple access points.
- Within Concourse, the user experience is different depending on whether syllabi are structured or unstructured. Unstructured systems allow users to upload and view syllabus files, search for courses, and do minimal reporting. Structured systems allow users to edit a uniform syllabus layout, search for content within syllabi, and access more reports based on the user’s permissions.
The structured/unstructured setting is enabled during implementation. If your institution decides to move from unstructured to structured syllabi down the line, email
support@campusconcourse.com to make the request and discuss how best to start the new implementation.
Adopting syllabus management software allows you to:
- store syllabi in a shared repository
- improve compliance with accreditation or legislation
- increase transparency and access to syllabi at your institution
- improve the user experience via a uniform interface
Choosing an unstructured system allows you to implement Concourse quickly to meet external requirements; in the long-term, you may choose to implement a structured system to take advantage of improved reporting capabilities among other benefits. Choosing a structured system from the start allows your institution to have more control over the syllabus development process to ensure accuracy and consistency of content across your institution.
Configuration Options
Your sandbox and production environments will be configured to the setting you choose during implementation (structured or unstructured).
- Option A: Structured Syllabi
- Option B: Unstructured Syllabi
If you’d like to check out both options before making your choice, check out our
demo environment, where structured and unstructured syllabi are both available for you to review. If the choices below don’t fit your needs, reach out to Client Services for assistance.
- Approach: Inform your implementation team that you would like to set up your Concourse system with structured syllabi and follow through the 12-step process of establishing domains, a template hierarchy, creating courses, assigning high-level permissions, training end users, and learning to use Concourse’s many features that support administrators. If you have previously implemented Concourse with unstructured syllabi, email support@campusconcourse.com to initiate a conversation about how you can transition your system and deploy its increased functionality to different user types.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that have many requirements for syllabus content; have syllabus content available in other systems; have a team dedicated to setting up and maintaining course templates; and have personnel available to train and support end users.
- Effort: Structured Concourse systems can be set up and implemented in twelve weeks. During implementation, members of your institution’s Concourse team will be able to access training materials to learn the system as they make configuration settings and prepare for deployment. With the information learned through training, your Concourse Team will be able to lead other users at your institution through the introduction of the platform. During the twelve-week implementation phase, Concourse is implemented with your LMS and SSO (optional), domain users and end users are trained, and templates are prepared. The time invested by each team member depends on their roles and responsibilities at your institution and within Concourse.
Advantages of Using Structured Syllabi | Disadvantages of Using Structured Syllabi |
Structured systems support multiple domain levels to organize your courses in more sophisticated ways. | The time and effort spent to implement structured Concourse systems can be significant. |
Standardized syllabus content can be managed quickly and easily across your institution by using templates. | There are usually multiple stakeholders at each institution about syllabus language, so determining what syllabi should contain specific language and what that language should be can take many thoughtful discussions. |
Structured systems support automated data feeds to quickly populate your syllabi with content from the SIS and catalog tool. | Because structured syllabi have more advanced functionality, training end users is more time and labor intensive. |
Because structured systems support unique syllabus items, high-level users are able to report on a very granular level about syllabus accuracy and completeness. |
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Structured systems can be integrated with your LMS and SSO portal to allow multiple access points for end users. |
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Structured systems support increased web accessibility; if syllabus authors use the native tools in Concourse to create their syllabi, the end results are more accessible to users with disabilities. |
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- Approach: Inform your implementation team that you would like to set up your Concourse system with unstructured syllabi and follow through the 6-step process of configuring your system settings, creating courses, assigning high-level permissions, training end users, and (if applicable), uploading historical syllabi.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that have an urgent need to make their syllabi searchable or accessible to large groups of users; do not have syllabus content readily available in other systems; do not have much standardized or required syllabus content; or that do not have the staff to train and support end users.
- Effort: Implementing an unstructured system can take as little as six weeks. During this process, your internal Concourse team works with Client Services to make choices about other system configurations and deployment. Training end users to access Concourse and upload files takes minimal effort and can typically be done with asynchronous job aids or reference materials. The time and effort to implement unstructured Concourse systems is far less than that required to implement structured systems; however, unstructured systems do not have the same administrative tools that are a key benefit of syllabus management software.
Advantages of Using Unstructured Syllabi | Disadvantages of Using Unstructured Syllabi |
The six-week implementation process allows new Concourse institutions to quickly launch syllabus management protocols to meet accreditation or legislation requirements. | Unstructured systems do not support syllabus items or templates, so it isn’t possible to populate syllabus content using data from your other systems. |
Limited functionality of unstructured systems results in more straightforward, concise training for end users. | Unstructured systems have more limited reporting capability; reports in unstructured systems can provide insight into users, permissions, system-level activity, and limited course activity (restricted to uploads/viewing). As a result, any reviews of syllabus content are driven by manual effort. |
Since faculty are typically uploading documents they authored to unstructured Concourse syllabi, there may be increased buy-in or initial adoption of unstructured systems. | Unstructured systems only support one domain, so all courses are stored in the same organizational unit. |
| While course feeds can be processed manually to create containers where syllabus files can be uploaded, unstructured systems do not support automated feeds of any type. |
| Unstructured systems support LMS integration but not SSO integration. |
| Because syllabi authored by instructors in other platforms may not make use of native accessibility tools, unstructured Concourse systems cannot guarantee the accessibility of syllabi to the same degree as in structured Concourse systems. |
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.
- Email support@campusconcourse.com to initiate a discussion about transitioning from an unstructured to structured system. Concourse Engineers will enable structured syllabi in your system.
- Work with client services to implement new domains, a template hierarchy, and feeds within your system. This is a process lasting several weeks, when decisions will be made about how to administer your system and populate syllabi.
- Check out on-demand training for domain users in the Syllabus Resource Center to learn about all the new features and functionality that are available in structured systems.
- Communicate with and train your end users (Concourse has Instructor Training Templates to help) on functionality in structured systems.
Concourse institutions that use structured systems rarely, if ever, choose to transition to unstructured systems. Switching from structured to unstructured syllabi would result in a loss of editing and reporting functionality as well as many other features. If this transition is something your institution is considering, please email
support@campusconcourse.com to start a conversation about this decision so that Team Concourse can review your use case and propose other options that might work better.
Before making a decision about using structured or unstructured syllabi, you should be familiar with some related issues and contexts.
Uploading a syllabus in an unstructured system is quick and easy. If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of using structured syllabi, check out the following articles:
- With structured systems, your courses can be organized into multiple domains; learn more about Setting Up and Managing Domains.
- With structured systems, you can push syllabus content from your other systems into Concourse via Automated Feed Processing.
- Course Templates Explained
- Syllabus Items Explained
- Learn about reporting tools available to you in the Concourse Report Center.
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.
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