Course Schedule

Recommended Practice

Reasoning

The idea of a course schedule is nothing new, but the course schedule is a very effective tool to communicate important information to the students, especially in a completely online course. A thorough schedule could include any or all of the following.

• Date topic begins
• Date topic ends
• Title of topic (week, chapter , specific topic, etc.)
• Due dates for
  • quizzes
  • exams
  • papers
  • discussion postings
  • etc
• Other?

The course schedule should be a stand-alone HTML document and located in the Start Here learning module.

Note: Do not duplicate the schedule in your syllabus. Duplication of information creates more work for you, and it sometimes leads to confusion for the students, especially if the information is different.

This is an example of communicating intentions in a concise way via explicit instructions. This also serves to keep students on task.

See an example of a course schedule.