Video Link

Lillian Nave discusses using an infographic syllabus in her classroom.

Transcript

Hi! This is Lillian Nave and I'm from College STAR and Appalachian State University and I want to tell you about an infographic syllabus. I use the free web application called Piktochart and you'll see that I have arranged some of the most important information for my students on a visually interesting syllabus template for my first-year seminar class. So, I've given them, the students, the goals in a variety of different ways and I tell them exactly what the assignments are that we do in our class that correlate to our particular learning goals. So this is a way that I minimize distractions I recruit interests in the class and I heighten the importance of these goals by displaying them in several formats. I also customize this information so the students know exactly why we're doing the things that we're doing.

So I help the students to understand our different modes of inquiry and how the grading system works and also explain our timeline, how we'll be going through the semester, when we're gathering information, when we're analyzing and synthesizing that information, and when they are producing knowledge for each other which are the documentary films that they'll be producing after they've learned about our subject matter. So I also tell them what our required texts are, they learn a little bit about me, and finally, I do answer some of their frequently asked questions. So although they do have a full linear syllabus, that's a lot of text that has all of the things that are required by our University. This visually maps out only the most important things that they need to know in our course. So I hope this is helpful for you and thanks very much.

Support for this Module

Original development of this module was made possible by the College STAR (Supporting Transition Access and Retention) initiative.  College STAR was a grant-funded project focused on partnering postsecondary educational professionals and students to learn ways for helping postsecondary campuses become more welcoming of students with learning and attention differences. Much of this work was made possible by generous funding from the Oak Foundation.