Make sure that material you find online isn’t licensed or you’ll need to get permission to use it. If you aren’t sure if content is licensed, play it safe and ask anyway.

Make extensive use of overviews before each module or even each subpoint. This will help the students understand what they’ll be learning before they get started. Try to be consistent with the amount of information, the amount of time required, and the number of assignments for each module. This will help students adjust to the pace of the course early on and prevent confusion. [2] X Research source

Start with objectives for individual units. Focus on analytic goals such as “Understand the economic and political causes of World War I,” rather than goals related to memory like “Learn the important dates leading up to World War I. ” Clear learning objectives will make it easier to design assessments like tests and paper assignments.

Textbooks will often include ideas for assignments, discussion activities, and sample quizzes that will help you populate the content. Don’t feel as though you have to follow the book exactly. The books will often include information that is superfluous for your class’s purpose. Talk to your school’s administration before selecting a book. They may have a contract set up with certain companies. [4] X Research source

The most popular LMSs are BlackBoard, Edmodo, Moodle, SumTotal, and SkillSoft. [6] X Research source If you have some software development skills, you may want to consider an open source LMS. These software are free to use and will allow you to manually change aspects of the code to tailor the LMS to your preference. The downside is that they usually don’t come with a customer support service Talk to your school’s administrators. Most schools have a contract with a specific LMS provider or will simply provide a preferred suggestion. If you need to select your own, ask other teachers what they prefer.

Give students relatively brief (300 words or so) writing assignments and then require them to respond to each other’s submissions. These writing prompts should evoke some controversy and allow room for differing and contradictory responses. [7] X Research source Each unit should include some kind of interactive assignment so that students are consistently engaged. This type of assignment may be more difficult for math or science course. However, you can use message boards to encourage students to explain how they worked out certain problems or applied formulas. You’ll want to outline some rule of engagement in the syllabus to ensure that everyone on the message board is respectful and refrains from personal attacks. It may help to stay away from questions that involve particularly hot button political issues unless they’re directly related to the content.

This can also build familiarity that makes it easier for students to form study groups and help each other through the course material.

If you do include traditional exams in your lesson plan, they should be based largely on written responses and include a time limit.

Many live video programs will allow students to type in questions in a message bank while you answer over the video stream. You can also request that students send you questions via email before the session.

You will also want to provide an overview of the course material including the expected learning outcomes, the specific material that will be covered, and a list of the major assignments.

When you save a document, there will be a dropdown menu under the bar where you change the documents name. It will include options to save the document as a PDF or as a Word document.

If you are using a professional LMS, include contact information for the customer service department on the syllabus.

Speak with your school administrator about your school’s disability accessibility policies and include necessary information on your syllabus.

You may want to ask another teacher or a student with some available time to run through it. After you’ve spent a lot of time developing content, it can be difficult to see it with fresh eyes.