Our university is moving to Canvas this summer.
One feature I'm looking forward to utilizing is way Canvas approaches syllabi. The dates that many faculty re-create each and every semester at the bottom of their syllabi are auto-populated by whatever assignments and other date-related items you enter within the learning management system (LMS).
Above those dates is an empty space, just waiting for a professor to get creative…
At the 2016 OLC Innovate conference, I saw a plethora of ways faculty are using either a custom course home page, or the top of the syllabus page to draw students in… This isn't specific to Canvas and would work in any learning management system (LMS).
I'm thinking I would like to use video to develop a sense of curiosity about my classes within an online syllabus.
Video course trailers
Thanks to Derek Bruff, I rediscovered what are called course trailers. These are similar to move trailers, but rather than getting students excited about a forthcoming movie, you get them excited about your class.
Duke has an introduction on how to create video course trailers, while there are plenty of other places to go for inspiration.
Harvard was one of the earliest developers of course trailers. They have a collection of trailers for their general ed courses and also from their school of government courses.
This trailer for a C.S. Lewis course is very inspiring. I suspect it could leave some faculty perceiving that the process of making a course trailer is too daunting, after watching it, however.
https://vimeo.com/album/2977329/video/47097354
Most of the trailers that I watched seemed to be geared toward attempting to persuade a potential student to take a particular course. Our department is such that getting students to enroll in my classes isn't typically the problem. Instead, I would like to have a course trailer to get them excited about what they are going to learn, once they have registered for one of my classes.
https://vimeo.com/album/2977329/video/20933798
Should any of us desire another resource for how to make a course trailer, this post from the University of Mary Washington should meet that need.
[reminder]What will you be working on over the summer to incorporate into your future classes? [/reminder]