Concourse Syllabus Training
Academic Affairs has moved to college-wide use of the Concourse Syllabus System embedded into the Canvas LMS. All syllabi will be provisioned with a template that contains up-to-date institutional policy, find-a-class information such as Course Description, Course Competencies, meeting times, and materials, as well as suggestions and guidelines for populating the remaining sections of the syllabus. These templates are accessible via the related Canvas course for instructor editing.
When are syllabi available for editing?
Syllabi are provisioned at the end of the prior semester. Once new Concourse Syllabus templates are provisioned, the previous semester syllabus will be locked for editing. The Concourse team chose to put this safeguard in place to avoid inadvertent editing of prior semester syllabi when attempting to use the Copy From tool in the Concourse system.
On that same note, once you complete your first syllabus, you may use the copy tool to copy into other sections of that course, please recognize that you must select each section to copy not select the name of the syllabus you wish to copy from. You will load in the other syllabus and think that the copying was completed. ALWAYS check the header to ensure you are in the right syllabus before editing.
To see the sections of the Concourse syllabus template view the checklist it will provide a breakdown of what is needed for each section and what is included in the non-editable sections.
How will students view the syllabus?
Students have immediate access to the Concourse Syllabus when the Canvas course is published regardless of the audit status.
What is the general procedure for setting up my syllabus?
- It is recommended to use the Graphic Organizer and Checklist to plan your syllabus and copy and paste your edited sections into the provisioned Concourse template.
- Download a PDF of your syllabus to review.
- To submit your syllabus for review, select the audit button at the top and follow the procedure outlined in the guide below.
- If you teach multiple courses/sections you may use the copy tool to choose which sections you want to bring into the your other syllabi. Keep in mind you must press “COPY” next to the syllabus you want to copy from (not the title of the syllabus).
Teaching Multiple Sections
If you teach multiple sections, once you complete one syllabus, you can easily copy the editable sections into your other courses. This is the same from semester to semester you will copy the previous semester’s information to the new syllabus and make the minor adjustments that may have occurred. You don’t have to worry about having the most recent institutional policies because they are pre-loaded semester to semester.
It is a best practice, if you intend to cross-list your courses, or you teach in a learning community that you follow a few tips found in the Concourse Cross-Listing document.
Please use the Concourse Troubleshooting form to communicate any feedback or issues that may arise with the use of Concourse. For general questions and feedback about Concourse Syllabus please complete the General Feedback form.
Dual Enrollment Instructions
Please follow these steps to prepare your Concourse Syllabus. Completed a syllabus with Concourse before? You can use the Copy Function to quickly copy information from a prior semester the the current semester.
- Snapshot of the template (Links to an external site.): this is how the template will look when you open it for the first time.
- Graphic Organizer (Links to an external site.): use this to complete the required information for your syllabus.
- DE Syllabus editing guide (Links to an external site.): once the syllabus is provisioned, you may copy and paste your completed sections in the graphic organizer to the corresponding sections in the Concourse template.
Find Your Canvas Course
- Go to learn.maricopa.edu to access Canvas, you can also find this on the cgc.edu homepage under quick links – Canvas.
- Login with your MEID and password. Need to figure out your MEID and password? Use the MEID Finder Tool
- You should see your course on the Dashboard. If you do not see it right away, go to Courses, All Courses. If you still do not see your course contact the CTLA or your DE supervisor.
Get Into Edit Mode in Concourse
To get into editing mode in the Concourse syllabus, you go to syllabus then edit. Once inside you will find comments guiding you on what is needed to edit for each section in the syllabus. Much of the syllabus is prefilled with examples in the comments that can be copied and pasted into the syllabus.
Building The Concourse Syllabus
Use Comments to Copy/Paste Content
The comments within the template are to guide you through building your syllabus and give you suggested language for fields that are open for editing. In addition, you can add comments to your syllabus for future reference.
Add New Item in a Section
Concourse Syllabus has preformatted fields to insert into the syllabus to make your syllabus more accessible without having to know any advanced web design. They are denoted by green boxes on the left in the edit syllabus mode. Scroll through the syllabus in edit mode to see the different fields you can add to the document.
Move Items Within a Section
Sub-sections of the main sections in the Concourse Syllabus can be reordered. The main sections, denoted by teal icons, such as Institutional Policies, are in a fixed order.
Delete Items
Deleting items is risky because there is no “undo” in Concourse Syllabus. Comments are deleted in addition to the section. Only unlocked sections can be deleted. Click the red box with the white x to delete.
Download The Backup PDF of Your Syllabus, Share, and Print The Concourse Syllabus
NOTE: Students will see whatever you see when you are in View mode in the Concourse Syllabus once you have published your course.
Download a Backup of Your Concourse Syllabus
View and Download your Concourse syllabus as a PDF to print.
Get the Hyperlink or Embed Code to Your Concourse Syllabus
To share your syllabus in your personal website or teacher page, you may go to Info in the Concourse menus and find the code to the right. Anyone with the link will be able to view your syllabus.
Submit The Concourse Syllabus For Review
When you have finished editing your syllabus, you are ready to mark it for review – note that this does not do anything for student viewing – students can view the syllabus as soon as your course is published. Also, you do not have to wait for approval before students view the syllabus. However, do make sure that the red writing at the top is gone before showing to students. Do so by going to Audit, at the top of the syllabus page, choosing “Submitted for review” in the audit status drop down box, entering a message in the box, and finally, clicking update. There is no need to send a notification to anyone.
NOTE: It is important to remember that once you have published your course, the current version of the syllabus in whatever state of editing will display.
Copy From Other Syllabus
Non-editable fields such as the heading and the institutional policies will always reflect the current semester. It is recommended that you use the Graphic Organizer and Checklist to organize your syllabus between semesters as it contains the most up-to-date recommended language.
Once you have completed one syllabus in the current semester you may use the copy tool to Copy From one syllabus to another. It is very important to press COPY next to the title of the syllabus you want to copy from NOT the actual title. If you did not have to select which sections to copy, then you did it wrong, refresh the page and try again.
Advanced Editing: Add Images, Files, and Change Text Size
Files and Images
Most sections in Concourse have an option for attaching files. To do that you must first upload the file to Concourse, or you may use Google Drive to link to files using link sharing features.
Images can be placed in Concourse through a bit of HTML coding using the source editor (<>) within the Rich Content Editor. The code is
<img src="link to the image" alt="This is a picture" />Links to images can be found on websites or by uploading an image to Concourse. Right click on the image from the internet and choose copy link address. Then paste that into “link to the image” in the code above.
You may also upload the image to Concourse in files and copy that link. It may not work from semester to semester however if you do not link to an outside source. Once you have the image uploaded you can resize it how you like.
Resize Text
To enlarge text within a section of the Concourse Syllabus, you must use the source code in the content editor denoted by brackets.
With the source code open, find the text you want to enlarge. Just before the first word type in the opening heading tag, ie. <h1> (see the image in the guide to find out which size you wish to use and adjust the tag accordingly).
After the end of the last word that you want enlarged, type the closing heading tag, ie. </h1>
Select OK in the Source Code and you should see the edited text.