The role of a syllabus is key for an eLearning course. Essentially, the syllabus operates as table of contents for the course; it provides a sketch of what is to come. Below are some thoughts one building an eLearning course syllabus.

When first developing content for a new online course you should create a 'table of contents' or index for the subject material. You should then define learning objectives for each section of the subject material. It is important to set the learning objective from the start because it will ensure that you will develop the content of quality and quantity to meet the learning objective. However, you will find that you are presented with the dilemma of providing all-inclusive content or not, because you cannot assume that all distance learners have access to resources, for example, a library.

Experience indicates that some sections of the course lends itself better to have all-inclusive content, while with others it is not possible. As a future online educator, you too will have to make decisions on what to put online.

Your Students

You should have an initial idea of whom you are targeting for your new course. You should more or less know the following regarding future participants to your course:

1. the average age,
   
2. their educational qualification,
   
3. their skill level,
   
4. their life/work experience,
   
5. access to resources (including available time), and
   
6. the reasons for doing the course.

The above information will only be confirmed once people register for your course. However, it is important to keep this information in mind while developing the course, because you have to decide at which level you are going to pitch your course. You should have a minimum level for your online content in order to accommodate your "weakest student". You also need to set minimum requirements with which a participant can access the online course, for example, needing a sufficiently fast connection to access the online course.

Three content development components

Course development is often described by dividing it into the 3 broad categories: (i) content, (ii) interaction and (iii) management (administration), but this has proved difficult mainly because of overlap between the categories. Instead, let us look at course development by focusing on the two main activities, namely, (i) content development (research), and (ii) web and interface development (management), when we started the development of the ISISlearn course. An online course should have most of the following components:

Content development perspective:

1. title and index (table of contents),
   
2. learning objectives for specific sections or subsections of the course,
   
3. learning activities, assignments, self-tests, assignments, and breakdown of marks,
   
4. glossary and references.

Interface development perspective:

1. opening title page with an apply button, login button and information for prospective and registered participants,
   
2. an interface that will allow for the administration of new users, for example, adding of new users to a particular course, adding marks and notices, etc.,
   
3. an interface that will allow for interaction, for example, chatting, discussion forum, etc.,
   
4. prerequisites, both academic and technical for doing the course,
   
5. orientation course to guide first- time users of the course,
   
6. index (table of contents) to access content,
   
7. a schedule or calendar with submission dates of assignments.

Examples:

• TR501 (KEWL)
• TR502 (KEWL)
• TR503 (KEWL)
• TR505 (KEWL)
• TR506 (KEWL)
• TECH393 (PDF), Reading List (PDF), Class Schedule (PDF)