Available August 24 – August 30, 2026
Note: Contact the Teaching and Learning Center to view this week’s session, send email to [email protected].
This 20-Minute Mentor gives ideas to make your syllabus more engaging, more student-centered, and more creative without a lot of extra effort. You’ll be able to turn a typically dry document into a living, engaging, and interactive student resource that can include multimedia, a series of slides, or a connected group of visuals — all created without any special technical know-how. Additionally, you’ll explore how to re-envision an existing syllabus so it will resonate with students.
Learning Goals
After viewing this Magna 20-Minute Mentor, participants will be able to:
- Create more engaging syllabi
- Implement frameworks for developing a new syllabus and for upgrading an existing syllabus
- Discover new tools and techniques for creating engaging syllabi that will help engage students at the start of a course
- Confidently assess a syllabus’s engagement potential
- Introduce a syllabus in new ways to spark student interest early in a course
Topics Covered
- The multiple purposes of a syllabus
- Why syllabi are often ignored by students
- A step-by-step process for developing a new syllabus
- A framework for upgrading an existing syllabus
- How to use visuals and other creative elements to make a syllabus more engaging
- New tools for creating a living syllabus
- A checklist for assessing the engagement potential of your syllabus
- Creative ways to introduce your syllabus to students