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In the online environment, it is important to provide clear expectations, policies, and grading expectations and to ensure that students are familiar with these policies and expectations (California State University, Chico, 2014). You may have a very detailed syllabus. However, students may not carefully read all of these details.

By creating a syllabus quiz with questions specific to your course policies, expectations, and routine, you will provide learner support by helping students become familiar with these important items (Kirk, 2011; Raymark & Connor-Greene, 2002). Requiring students to complete the syllabus quiz during the first week of class may reduce student questions related to course policies. Another benefit of requiring students to complete the syllabus quiz is that it provides students practice using the assessments tool. Things to consider are:

  • Consider allowing unlimited attempts for students to complete the syllabus quiz.
  • Create a quiz with question types that will be automatically graded by the Course Management System (e.g., multiple choice, true/false) so that students receive immediate feedback.
  • Determine if you would like to set release criteria so that students must earn a certain score before the course content (e.g., Module 1) opens to students.

Link to example artifact(s)

Syllabus example from Dr. Alisha Janowsky, UCF: Syllabus Quiz Sample

Link to scholarly reference(s)

Kirk, K. (2011). Syllabus quiz. Teaching Geoscience Online.  http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/online/activities/46956.html

Raymark, P., & Connor-Greene, P. (2002). The syllabus quiz. Teaching of Psychology 29(4), http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15328023TOP2904_05#.VA9dB2RdWaY

Rubric for Online Instruction. California State University, Chico. (2009). https://www.csuchico.edu/eoi/

Citation

Chen, B., Thompson, K., Sugar, A., & Vargas, J. (2015). Incorporate a syllabus quiz to orient students. In B. Chen & K. Thompson (Eds.), Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository. Orlando, FL: University of Central Florida Center for Distributed Learning. https://topr.online.ucf.edu/syllabus-quiz/.