Colleagues,
We hope you have been enjoying some days off! Our team has been hard at work, also not without joy! The minute this email will be sent, Sherisse Brown, our LMS admin and Ed Tech Manager, will activate the new Syllabus tab in the York default nav (navigation) bar in Brightspace.
Clicking on this new tab will bring you directly to your syllabus working document in the Simple Syllabus platform. You can edit it—update content you put in last semester or, if you are new to the platform, copy and paste content from a syllabus in Word (or such)—and submit it as your Syllabus for viewing by your students.
This is an unofficial test launch, as we are eager to find out if all works. The official announcement will be closer to the start of the semester. Know this:
Even if we deactivate the tab between now and then (very unlikely), edits on your syllabus working doc in the platform are continuously saved and will not be lost.
You do not have to complete your syllabus in one swoop. As long as your syllabus is not submitted your students will get a “Oops, your instructor is working on it” message.
If you have already activated your course in Brightspace, you may consider deactivating it until closer to the start of the semester when we will also send a communication about the Syllabus to students.
If you are teaching a section of a multi-section course, there is a chance that you cannot submit your syllabus working doc because the course coordinator has not yet completed the components of the syllabus that need to be identical for all sections. Please contact us (lmshelp@PROTECTED) if that is the case.
Instructions on how to work on your syllabus are in the “Read this first” section at the top of the working doc.
We hope you will enjoy working on your syllabus this way!
Regards,
Greet & the Team
Greet Van Belle, PhD | Director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Educational Technologies (CTLET) | CUNY York College | 718-262 2810 | Find me in Teams as greet.vanbelle00