Configuration Options: Transitioning from Uploaded to Structured Syllabi

Configuration Options: Transitioning from Uploaded to Structured Syllabi

Synopsis

Institutions may opt for an unstructured Concourse system initially so that syllabi can quickly and easily be stored, searched, and made available to broad audiences. Once these institutions become more familiar with Concourse and learn more about its many features that support consistent data and quality assurance, however, it is not uncommon for them to transition from an unstructured (uploaded syllabi) to a structured system (uniform syllabus items and appearance). The process of transitioning from uploaded to structured syllabi requires significant collaboration; determining the item categories, their order, their sources of truth, and how to deploy structured syllabi to end users requires input from academic stakeholders, IT personnel, and faculty trainers. When it comes to deploying structured syllabi in your system, you can choose to launch a small pilot group of structured syllabi or you can release structured syllabi institution-wide.  Continue reading to learn more about these options.

Key Terms

  1. Pilot: a small-scale launch of Concourse at your institution; pilot groups can be limited to a specific domain or function. 
  2. Course: the artifact in Concourse that contains the syllabus.
  3. Unstructured Syllabi: the main resource in a course in Concourse; in unstructured systems, files authored with other tools are uploaded to Concourse.
  4. Structured Syllabi: the main resource in a course in Concourse; in structured systems, content is added to predetermined items either manually or via Item Feed.
  5. Item: a category of related content in a syllabus; there are twelve default items in a Concourse syllabus.
  6. Feed: a data file that is used to migrate information from external systems to Concourse; feeds can be automated or processed manually.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Agnostic training: agnostic training is not specific to any institution’s Concourse environment; instead, it focuses on universal functionality of the platform, default labels and orders of items, and provides an overview of the ways Concourse may be used at different institutions.
  10. Syllabus Resource Center: Concourse’s live and on-demand agnostic training is facilitated in and hosted by the Syllabus Resource Center. The information available in this platform is free, but users must create an account to access the site and resources.
  11. Internal training: training developed by the institution for its users is considered internal. Internal training typically includes images and language that reflects your end users’ experience with Concourse.

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.
Key Players
  1. For decisions about populating syllabus content, academic leaders and staff whose work is related to accreditation and compliance or the syllabus development process should be consulted when making this decision.
  2. For decisions about introducing structured Concourse functionality to end users, you should consult academic leaders, faculty trainers, professional development staff, and your institution’s center for teaching and learning (if applicable).
  3. Note that transitioning from unstructured to structured syllabi will likely require changes to your contract and/or license fees. It’s important to consult budget officers early in the decision-making process to ensure that this is a cost your institution can accommodate.
Consideration
Determining how to transition from uploaded to structured syllabi depends on two main factors:
  1. Data available: If syllabus content such as course descriptions, outcomes, and materials are readily available for a specific program at your institution but other programs are still assembling this data, then it might be best to use a small pilot group to test feeds, training materials, and quality assurance processes.
  2. Accreditation and legislative compliance: If your institution is subject to upcoming accreditation reporting or compliance with state legislation about syllabus content, you should consider the timeline of these external factors as well as the data available to determine whether a small pilot or an institution-wide launch is best. 
Timing
After a few terms, you may find that your syllabus management needs have outgrown what uploaded syllabi can support. This decision can be made at any time, but it is effectively a new Concourse implementation, so it will take several weeks to months to complete. If your institution pursues this option, we recommend that you do so at least one full academic term prior to the intended deployment.
Connected Systems & Locations
  1. Users continue to access Concourse via the existing integration, either through the LMS or SSO portal. 
  2. Structured syllabi can accept syllabus content via manual input or Item Feed. If you opt to process Item Feeds to populate syllabus items:
    1. Data is queried from the SIS to generate Item Feeds. Many system admins use SQL to collect the data and generate feed files.
    2. 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.
Method
If your institution decides to transition from unstructured to structured syllabi, email support@campusconcourse.com to make the request to change this setting in your system and discuss how best to implement this new feature.
Motivation & Impact
Transitioning from unstructured to structured syllabi allows your institution to take advantage of Concourse’s advanced functionality that supports syllabus templates, consistent data, activity and user reporting, and more. It supports compliance and quality assurance measures to result in a uniform end user experience and improved student outcomes.

Configuration Options

There are many dependencies involved in the decision of how to transition from uploaded to structured Concourse syllabi. You will need to determine template structure, item structure, sources of truth for individual items, and how syllabi will be populated and reviewed. In either option, the template hierarchy should be established far in advance of deployment, and templates should be populated prior to creating courses and training end users. If you plan to populate syllabus items via feed, this is an additional process that should be implemented prior to creating courses. For more information about these parts of the transition, see Template Administration and Provisioning and Synchronizing Syllabus Item Content. Once you have determined your approach to templates, the next step is to make choices about Administering Section Syllabi. When it comes to deploying structured syllabi to end users, you have the following options:
  1. Option A: Small Pilot Group Deployment
  2. Option B: Institutional Deployment
If the choices below don’t fit your needs, reach out to Client Services for assistance.
Option A: Small Pilot Group Deployment
  1. Approach: After your institution’s template hierarchy has been established and higher-level templates have been populated, a domain, such as a department or program, is chosen to be the pilot group for its urgent syllabus management needs or its history of successful technology adoption. Domain users, template editors, and instructors in this domain are all trained (either simultaneously or separately) in a cohort. Training in this approach typically occurs in the production environment in test courses that aren’t linked to LMS shells. Course templates are created and populated via Item Feeds and manual input and then Structured syllabi are made available to students registered for courses in the selected domain while courses in other domains continue to upload syllabus files. During and after the pilot, its successes and challenges are noted and used to improve deployment for another domain or group of domains until Concourse is deployed to the entire institution.
  2. Better For: This option is used most often by institutions where a specific domain has a group of users who have the bandwidth and ability to complete training on additional functionality. These users may serve as exempla or influencers for other Instructors to increase adoption success for other domains.
  3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Small Pilot Group Deployment: This approach allows you to effectively deploy structured Concourse syllabi to one domain or selected group of your campus at a time, which is helpful for reflecting on the deployment process and improving training or communication methods before deploying structured syllabi to other groups. This approach is also helpful for providing a successful model of implementation to other domains. While not necessarily a disadvantage, this approach assumes that deployment of structured syllabi can occur over the course of multiple academic terms. If this timeline is not feasible for your institution, it may be better to consider a different approach. 
  4. Effort: Regardless of the option you choose, the same amount of time and effort are expended to establish the template hierarchy and populate templates. The small pilot group deployment option introduces structured syllabi to end users at the pace your institution sets, so it is possible to introduce to one domain during the first term, all the departments in a college or school the following term, and the entire institution the next term. Alternatively, you can deploy structured syllabi to several departments across your institution during one term and then deploy institution-wide the following term. 
Option B: Institutional Deployment
  1. Approach: In this approach, system data and some syllabus content are typically populated via feeds from other systems, such as the SIS, and then end users such as Instructors, Managers, and Developers are trained on populating other structured syllabus items. End users typically start modifying live/section syllabi in the production environment instead of training in the sandbox, but we do recommend that all feeds be tested in the sandbox before implementing them in production. End users are provided asynchronous resources to support their Concourse use, and students access structured Concourse syllabi for all their classes during the same term.
  2. Better For: This option tends to be more effective for smaller organizations, institutions with less complicated Concourse systems, or institutions that populate the majority of syllabus items for instructors. This approach may also be used by institutions that must deploy structured syllabi quickly due to external pressures, such as accreditation or legislative requirements.
  3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Institutional Deployment: The major advantage of institutional deployment is that it can be accomplished quickly. A disadvantage of this approach is that it isn’t conducive to institutions that allow a high degree of instructor syllabus customization; in other words, the more syllabus items instructors have to edit on live/section syllabi, the more training is required and the longer it will take for users to meet expectations.
  4. Effort: Regardless of the option you choose, the same amount of time and effort are expended to establish the template hierarchy and populate templates. Institution-wide deployment typically occurs over a shorter timeline than the small group pilot option, but it takes more strategic communication and coordination to ensure that it goes smoothly since there are so many end users being trained and exposed to the system simultaneously. In this deployment approach, there may be a large group of people responsible for leading training and quality assurance efforts.

Post-Decision Changes

While many configuration settings can be “undone” after a while, your institution only has one chance at deploying structured syllabi. The approach you choose sets the tone for institutional use, so it’s important to make a good first impression. Once you have determined how to introduce Concourse to your users, it’s crucial to provide support and training so that users are more likely to be successful. Whatever deployment approach you choose, we encourage you to be realistic about what you can accomplish and be flexible to support your end users. Remember that–regardless of deployment size–you are able to change your methods for training, communication, and syllabus modification in whatever way will best support your users.

Related Topics

Before making a decision about transitioning from uploaded to structured syllabi, you should be familiar with some related issues and contexts. See the following articles for more information:
  1. Read about group permissions to understand how instructors can engage with live syllabi after your system has been populated with important information from external sources and high-level users.
  2. If you feel overwhelmed by the idea of developing training materials for instructors, we have a resource to get you started. Download the slide decks and documents available in our Instructor Training Templates article to jump start the training phase of deployment.
  3. Check out the agnostic training materials available to System Admins, domain users, and instructors in the Syllabus Resource 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.

    • Related Articles

    • 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 ...

    • Configuration Options: Extracting Data

      Synopsis Data in your Concourse system is invaluable for a number of reasons, such as accreditation reporting and compliance reporting. While much of the information in your Concourse system can be found in other locations, such as the SIS, you may ...

    • Configuration Options: Migrating Data

      Synopsis At your institution, syllabus content may originate from a variety of platforms, such as the Student Information System (SIS), institutional websites, or shared drives. If your institution synchronizes this data in Concourse to be part of ...

    • Configuration Options: Data Sources

      Synopsis Your institution’s syllabi likely contain a variety of data that originate or are stored in different platforms. Concourse allows your institution to quickly and easily consolidate important course data from multiple sources in your syllabi. ...

    • Configuration Options: Auditing Syllabi

      Synopsis The Audit feature allows a variety of users to participate in the syllabus development, review, and approval processes all within your Concourse system. The Audit feature is a system-wide configuration setting; if Audit is enabled, all users ...