The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map: Communicating Your Course

“[Nilson’s] book… contains all sorts of amazing examples which aren’t designed to replace traditional syllabi text but to supplement it. If you are a visual learner and good with graphics, there’s a real opportunity to get creative here.

“If there was one of these graphic representations in the syllabus, on the course website or in a PowerPoint, it would be so easy to haul it out at every major juncture in the course to give some context to where we’re going and how it relates to where we’ve been. It could be used in a very literal sense to help students see the ‘big picture’ rather than experiencing the course as a collection of seemingly separate topics.

“In fact, this exercise need not be about just one course. Say there are two courses in a sequence or that one course is a pre-requisite to another. Rather than just saying that the courses are related, those relationships could be shown. It’s a way of getting students to understand that courses make artificial boundaries between content areas that are inextricably linked. It might also be a way of increasing the number of connections faculty could build between what students learned in one course and what they are studying in the next one. The possibilities are quite intriguing.”

—Maryellen Weimer, Teaching Professor Blog