The Value of Extended Syllabi and Customized Course Readers in Distance History Education Courses

One of the challenges of teaching interactive broadcast courses is that many students are not in a single classroom.  Distance technology can also be capricious, with unexpected power outages, software glitches, time lags and unreliable audio or visual equipment making it difficult for students to fully participate in classroom activities. On an even more basic level, many of these students feel it is sometimes difficult to get their questions about lectures, assignments and exams answered in a timely manner. Unlike the face-to-face classroom student the remotely located student cannot “stay after class” and speak one-on-on with their instructor. As a result many of these students often feel disconnected from their instructor and the rest of the class. One way to empower all students in a course, both remotely located and face-to-face, is to make use of extended syllabi and custom course readers. Both of these are initially time-intensive to assemble, but can have a big long-term payoff in terms of student satisfaction. Extended syllabi provide more information about a course than the traditional syllabus and make available more tools to help a student understand the instructor’s expectations of various assignments. They can be thought of as an academic toolbox. Custom course readers make use of public domain documents widely available on the internet. They allow instructors to truly customize their course rather than rely on a publisher’s document reader which may not contain material relevant to the instructor’s themes or interests.  The customized documents need to be edited, and can include introductory material, study questions and footnotes to make them more understandable to students. The main benefit of these readers is that they help students focus on particular course themes and objectives. These syllabi and readers help students maximize their study time and feel more connected to the class.