Discover Best Practices

Teaching Tips
It's never too early to start planning for the next term, whether it's the course syllabus or the course materials themselves -- including your Bb course site. Each link below provides timely tips concerning the corresponding week of the semester.

• Week One - Use SPOT report to improve current course, block student access to copyrighted materials on last semester’s Blackboard courses, the first-day attendance policy for online courses, and assignments for recently enrolled on-campus students
• Week Two - Get to know your students
• Week Three - Use the Technology-Enhanced Classrooms
• Week Four - Deter unoriginal work
• Week Five - Help students maintain integrity in their papers and projects
• Week Six - Get feedback from your students at midterm
• Week Seven - Organize grading criteria in a rubric
• Week Eight - Integrate "active learning" into your class
• Week Nine - Place book orders online
• Week Ten - Use a course calendar to manage your workload
• Week Eleven - Design an online lesson for those days you have to cancel class
• Week Twelve - Increase your students' research skills
• Week Thirteen - Keep a teaching journal
• Week Fourteen - Begin drafting next semester’s syllabus
  It's hard to begin considering your next term’s syllabi while you're racing to the end of this semester, but now is when you can still recall those policies that worked out well or the ones you were continually clarifying. Now is also when you can see clearly if you did indeed assign too much reading or not plan in enough time for a particular unit. Also be sure and review the tone of your syllabi—did it reflect your enthusiasm for the material and was it welcoming to the students?
  We've developed a Syllabus Checklist, and the following templates in Word, RTF, and HTML formats for the convenience of instructors.
  • Download one of the files below (right click and save or control click and save) in the format you desire -- save it on your local computer. (Caution: it may be necessary for you to download the template and open it on your computer instead of just clicking the link.)
  • download syllabus.doc
  • download syllabus.rtf
  • download syllabus.html
  • Edit the downloaded file, inserting information about your particular course.
  • Upload the completed syllabus into Blackboard or other delivery tool, and/or
  • Print and reproduce the syllabus for hardcopy handouts.
• Week Fifteen - Copy contents from your spring Bb course site into your summer or fall course site

Back to Best Practices
Back to Online Resources