Course Preparation

Info on Publishing Syllabi, Textbooks, and Course Instructor Surveys

1 Creating and Publishing Your Class Syllabus
2 Textbooks Adoptions

Creating and Publishing Your Class Syllabus

The School of Information makes all of our class syllabi available online with links posted to our online Class Schedule. For any given semester, it is recommended that syllabi be posted to our website before registration begins to better aid in students' course selection process. Otherwise, they must be posted by the first day of classes.

Additionally, the State of Texas, under House Bill 2504, has mandated that the University must maintain a centralized public search site compiling syllabi and instructor CVs for all courses offered at the Undergraduate level. Further details can be found below, and official instructions for complying with this requirement are available here.

Creating An Effective Syllabus

The UT Faculty Innovation Center provides a wealth of guidance for new faculty to assist with course planning, instructional strategies, and implementing classroom technologies.

Among those resources is this very useful instructional page specifically on how to build an effective course syllabus:

https://facultyinnovate.utexas.edu/instructional-strategies/effective-syllabus

Using Canvas

Course Syllabi are typically generated within Canvas.

- Once the syllabus has been published on Canvas, you must take additional steps to make sure the syllabus is publicly visible regardless of login credentials. Instructions for this process can be found at http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/55577-what-is-the-syllabus
- Once the syllabus has been made public, your final step is to connect it to your class entry on the iSchool class schedule page. This is a fairly automatic process which simply involves entering the syllabus URL into the online form at https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/upload_course_syllabus and matching it to your class schedule entry using the pull down menu provided.

Using File Upload

You may also simply create your syllabus the old fashioned way and save it as any one of these standard document formats (doc, docx, pdf, rtf, txt). We will still need to publish it online and make it findable via our online class schedule, so...

- Once you have a completed your syllabus document, just upload it to our server using the form at https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/upload_course_syllabus and match it to your class entry on our schedule using the provided pull down menu. Your syllabus will then be saved to our server and the link will be posted to our online class schedule.
- Should you revise or update your syllabus at any time after publishing it online, you'll need to repeat this process so the most current and accurate version is always publicly available.

House Bill 2504 Undergraduate Syllabus Requirements

In 2011, The State of Texas passed House Bill 2504 requiring that syllabi for all undergraduate courses as well as each instructor's Curriculum Vitae (CV) be made publicly available and searchable via the University's main web page before the first day of classes each semester. It is required that each individual faculty member provide these documents in searchable PDF format following a specific file naming convention. Failure to comply with this rule may result in corrective action by state authorities and the Provost's Office.

- Instructions regarding the mandatory criteria of your syllabus and CV can be found here.
- Once your documents are ready to go, you may upload them to the online document management system located here.
- To verify that your documents have been correctly uploaded and are visible to the Provost's Office and the public, please use the public syllabus and cv search site located here.

Further information regarding this legislation may be found here

Questions about this process may be directed to the iSchool's Course Scheduler, Aaron Ulmer.

All feedback regarding the uploading system and its instructions, should be directed to regops-course-docs@utlists.utexas.edu.

Textbooks Adoptions

Prior to each semester, faculty may submit orders for their students' required textbooks to the University Co-op Bookstore on Guadalupe Street. The Co-op staff will research each textbook and place the appropriate orders for the upcoming semester. It is highly encouraged that faculty turn in their orders by the priority deadline. Doing so will help ensure your textbooks are available before classes begin, as well as increase the likelihood of offering a cheaper used book option.

For the most up-to-date information on the Co-op's textbook requisition procedures and to link to their new online request system, please consult the textbook adoptions portion of the Co-op website at http://www.universitycoop.com/info/textbook-adoptions.

If at any time your students should have difficulty obtaining their textbooks or if additional books are needed after classes have begun, please contact the Co-op at 512-322-7003 or 800 555-2414 as soon as possible.