What does it mean to 'cover' the syllabus in online courses?

As a teacher, what does it mean to you to ‘cover’ the syllabus? Does it mean that you make use of a good textbook that gives all the essential concepts? Does it mean that you fill the course with learning activities that will help your students achieve the intended learning outcomes? Or does it mean that you verbally deliver to the students every aspect of the syllabus through lecturing and demonstrations? A lot of academics I work with feel that the only way for them to ‘cover’ the syllabus in an online course is for them to lecture all of the content.

My response to these colleagues is generally, ‘Are you the only source of content for what your students need to learn?’

Are you the only source of information?

A lot of university teachers have a firmly held belief that their job is to lecture the students through all of the content in the module, and if the concepts are difficult or complex, then they need to spend more time explaining them.

However, we live in a wonderfully rich world of resources. Most modules have a list of key texts that students can access from the library or purchase. Of those, there is most often one that can be treated as a ‘core’ text, and this can become the primary source of the learning content for your students. Increasingly, university libraries are providing digital access to these books, so students studying at distance have access. This can throw up challenges around the number of licenses the library holds, but if in doubt, talk to your subject librarian – generally the most lovely, helpful people in any university!  There are also huge amounts of information that can be sourced from digital databases, as well as the open internet. Your job, in ensuring you ‘cover’ the syllabus, can become the role of curating the resources and guiding your students towards these, so that they have access to all the knowledge they need and can come to your classes ready to actively participate in their learning.  

Syllabus vs. Learning Outcomes

What is it that your students are supposed to learn and achieve by completing your module? University course specifications often include a list of topics that will be addressed during the module, or a description of this as a syllabus for the module. Some don’t. Some may be only indicative in the topic areas to be covered.

What all module specs have are learning outcomes.

It is fundamental to university teaching that what students need to do is to achieve the learning outcomes for each of the modules they are studying.  They are assessed on the achievement of those outcomes. Students do not develop knowledge or skills described in learning outcomes by listening to you. Even if the learning outcome is ‘Describe theory X’, students don’t learn to describe when you are talking about it. Your ability to describe it is improving, not theirs. Students learn and achieve learning outcomes through what they do with the information presented to them. If you accept that you are not the only source of information, and guide students towards those other sources, then the time you spend with them will be much more fruitful when you ask them to participate in learning activities, on which you can provide guidance and feedback on their performance, and they can actively work towards the learning outcomes.

Dealing with the unfamiliar

The move into online teaching and learning makes a lot of teachers nervous, and that’s understandable; as a teacher, you have a familiarity with the classroom, with the physical space, with the way in which you interact with students in that space; you listen to them and read their body language to understand whether your teaching is being successful or not. Lots of these signals are removed when you teach online, particularly when your webinar is a single room with large numbers of students – many of whom don’t switch on their cameras.

A common response is to default to lecture mode. The unfamiliar, uncomfortable nature of this delivery mode perhaps seems to lend itself most easily to the teacher talking, and the students listening. This is controllable, it’s also recordable, so the students will be able to listen again to the recording of the lecture so that they can learn it.

But what a painful process that would be! If the expectation is that a student may have to listen to a one, two or even three-hour lecture repeatedly in order to gain benefit from your teaching, then something is going wrong.

To deal with the unfamiliarity of delivering online, we all need to be prepared to experiment, try a variety of strategies, talk to colleagues for ideas, reflect on what works well and what doesn’t and as much as possible use the lesson hours in ways that get your student busy. You will find a lot more of the verbal and visible signals of students’ progress return to your teaching environment when they are busy working with each other and with you.

Coverage in STEM subjects

I know that teachers of STEM subjects are particularly concerned about explaining and demonstrating the complex processes they need their students to understand and carry out. The lack of the lab environment when first going online, removing the ability to roam, monitor students’ progress, advise individuals and clarify to the group, makes a lot of people nervous about whether the explanations are clear and detailed enough to enable the students to work. STEM teachers often use the live class to give that detailed explanation and invite their students to practice and apply in the time they spend away from the class.

I would encourage you all to think about flipping that process. Curate the secondary sources that will give the student the information, detail and process knowledge that they require. If you don’t think the secondary sources give enough detail or that there are specific points you know you need to demonstrate, think about recoding micro-lectures or short demo videos that you upload into the VLE. Remember the time and effort it takes to create these is rewarded in their re-usability. Once a resource is created it can be repurposed and reused repeatedly and in a variety of context.

If you get your students to spend their time in the live classes working on problems, collaborating on tasks, seeking solutions, and ask them to work in breakout rooms, or share their screens, or present their solutions, you will find that you can return the affordances of the lab environment into the online classroom.