course procedures

Syllabus

Course Procedures

Establishing clear, student-friendly procedures is critically important to the success of a remotely taught course.

A syllabus typically lays out guidelines and procedures for how a course is to be conducted — when papers are due, which textbooks will be used, and so on — but in a remote course, procedural guidelines are of critical importance. They are the reference point to which students turn when uncertainties arise, and the arbiter in all questions regarding course policies.


Writing about distance education, Tait (2000) refers to three areas in which students in remote/virtual learning environments need particular support:

Students need to know:

“Even if you intend to explain assignments and procedures later in the course, it’s best to state them up front in the syllabus as well.”

Ko & Rossen, p. 121

References & Resources

Ko, S. and Rossen, S. (2017). Creating an effective online syllabus (Chapter 5, pp. 111-137). Teaching Online: A Practical Guide (4th ed.). New York and London: Routledge.

Murphy, L. (2015). Online language teaching: The learner’s perspective. In Hampel, R. and Stickler, U. Developing Online Language Teaching: Research-based Pedagogies and Reflective Practices. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 45-62.

Tait, A. (2000). Planning student support for open and distance learning. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 15(3), 287-299.