Perhaps I could not hear well, but what usability heuristic form did you use? What were the heuristics the participants rated? Also, could you provide a resource to the product rating card you used? I apologize again, I may not be able to hear the audio too clearly, but I am very interested in these usability evaluation methods.
Hi Jessica, thank you for your questions! Looks like my transcript is not accessible (sorry for the inconvenience, I attached my transcript here).
I created the liquid syllabus by Google Site. You can create a liquid syllabus (public website) by any visual editor – WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), for example, Google site, WordPress, WIX, Squarespace, Weebly, etc.
The usability heuristic form is Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design (developed by Nielsen and Molich in 1990, and later refined by Nielsen in 1994), which was used for evaluating and identifying the usability problems in the UI design of the liquid syllabus. The 0.28 is the total average score from the five participants.
The product reaction card developed by Microsoft in 2002 was used for testing visual appeal and getting a sense of students’ overall reaction to the liquid syllabus. The full list includes 118 words (better to modify it, I attached mine here). I asked each participant to choose the top five words that are most closely associated with their experience in using the site with explanations.
kristinbivens
1 year ago
Jiaxin, it seems as though the students you asked enjoyed the liquid syllabus for 2311! I had not heard of liquid syllabi before, so I am intrigued. Did any of the students have learning accommodations or request any? You include some content about accessibility. Since it’s a webpage, did you run WAVE tests on it? If so, what were the results?
Thank you for your comments! I don’t have any students tell me the accessibility concerns/issues relevant to the liquid syllabus. It’s might because I provide both the traditional syllabus on the Blackboard (because the University requires to submit a PDF copy of course syllabus) and the liquid syllabus, considering most of the students are more familiar with the traditional format. The result shows even liquid syllabus is new to them, more students willing to use the liquid syllabus than the PDF/DOC.
I cannot remember how many students exactly had learning accommodations. However, every semester, I could receive at least 2-4 emails from the Student Disability Services (SDS) for the two sessions I’m teaching. This fall semester I received 3 emails from SDS, and one student emailed me for discussing accommodations in class at the beginning of the semester. I didn’t run the WAVE tests. I only tested the screen reader (Safari and Chrome on Mac) and asked my friends to use the website to finish some tasks after I created it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention to make it more accessible!
danielliddle
1 year ago
Like other commenters, the term liquid syllabus is new to me, as is the modifier “liquid” to signify a type of documentation. In your experience, is the metaphorical weight of “liquid” intended to signal the accessibility of syllabus? What does “liquid” add more than if we called it, say, a “cloud syllabus” or “accessible syllabus” or “web syllabus” some other term?
I think the main features of “liquid syllabus” are humanized content (inclusive), equitable, and accessible. Traditional syllabi need to follow the guidelines or template by the institution on how to draft the course policy. For many instructors and their institutions, a syllabus serves as a contract between student-instructor; as a permanent record of academic documentation; and as a learning tool for students (Parkes & Harris, 2010). Liquid syllabus (with pictures, welcome video, and supportive words) increased learning experience and students’ engagement with the course material. One participant told me, she preferred to scroll a clickable webpage than look up information from a 10+ pages word doc syllabus. Syllabus stored on Drive may still need to log in or have the institutional account to access. A liquid syllabus could be viewed at any time on any device (equitable and accessible). Students don’t need a laptop to check the course schedule or don’t need to zoom in on the PDF/DOC file on the 6” cell phone screen (mobile responsiveness).
Parkes, J., & Harris, M. B. (2010). The purposes of a syllabus. College Teaching, 50(2), 55-61.
ameliachesley
1 year ago
thank you for sharing this beautiful poster and audio presentation. your study design and your research purpose strike me as so wonderfully meaningful. the idea of a “liquid syllabus” like yours sounds so useful. it’s no surprise that students seem to love it!
what advice or resources would you have for instructors who want to incorporate this style of syllabus into their teaching but aren’t sure where to start? what best practices would you emphasize?
also, what are your next steps with this research?
I was going to ask a similar question, what would be the best way to go about creating / designing a liquid syllabus. Should they all include key items similar to how traditional syllabuses typically include the same sections every year.
Thank you for your question! I include the key items similar to the traditional syllabus. At the same time, rethinking the connection between each element and make changes could make it easier to read. For example, the Accommodations and University Resources are two separated sections from the template. I put them together in the liquid syllabus with a sentence added in-between “Everyone learns differently. If you are facing a barrier to access in my class, I invite you to talk with me about it by email or during my office hour so that we can address it together. My priority is your success in this course” in bold. The bold text will become the focal point for this section. Then, they can look at the Official paragraph about Accommodations from the university above or the list of University Resources below.
Thank you for your comments! Briefly, I’d suggest instructors with the traditional syllabus ready to start with a sitemap and information architecture (How many pages? What’s the connection? What’s the organization, arrangement, and structure of the webpage?) Secondly, record a short welcome video to introduce yourself, the class, and this liquid syllabus. Thirdly, choose a platform (you may find various templates online and can make changes on it) to drag, upload, copy, and paste the information from the traditional syllabus. Fourthly, edit the content in a supportive tone and apply design principles to highlight content or create information flow. After that, testing the website. Finally, email it to students a week before the semester begins. Pre-semester connection is the key, because that will influence their perception about the instructor and the class.
I’d also suggest using embedded code or plugins on the liquid syllabus for student-instructor interaction. Not all the students are available during the scheduled office hour to discuss the questions/concerns they have. Therefore, I provided my other availabilities on Calendly (or Doodle, Appointlet, etc), and I integrated it with Zoom and my institution email. By embedding it on my liquid syllabus, students can check my availabilities (without emailing me) and make an appointment with me by simply click on the page (without emailing me). After the student confirms the time, both of us will receive a confirmation email and the reserved time will be automatically added to my outlook calendar.
These resources from Dr. Pacansky-Brock might be helpful. One is the instructions created on a public Canvas course, the other is her own liquid syllabus for her History of Still Photography asynchronously class.
I received lots of feedback and inspirational questions from the reviewers and commenters. The first thing I could do is to improve my current liquid syllabus to create better teaching materials. Then, I’m rethinking the limitations of this study. The survey was only sent out once through the semester. If I do this research again, I could survey more than once through the semester to track students’ use of liquid syllabus, or maybe testing the liquid syllabus on different devices. I also thought about creating a comparative study on how the modalities of syllabi would influence the learning experience (one session use the traditional syllabus only, the other use the liquid syllabus only).
thank you very much– this is all great information for anyone interested in trying this out.
Jessica Campbell
1 year ago
I think the mixed-methods you used very effective at being able to obtain a broad understanding of how students perceived and used the liquid syllabus. Well done.
Thanks for sharing your research, Jiaxin! I love the concept of “liquid syllabus.” According to your survey and usability testing results, are there any potential problems of liquid syllabus? If so, how would instructors address those issues and create a liquid syllabus that is more accessible, engaging, and ethical?
Thank you for your questions! My survey and usability testing results suggested two improvements to my syllabus. 1. I added major project titles on the Weekly Schedule to make elements visible (providing time frames for each project). 2. I combined the Attendance and Participation section into one with an explanation to improve consistency and standard.
To create an accessible, engaging, and ethical liquid syllabus, we need to create user-centered content. It’s also necessary to run a test (e.g. WAVE test suggested by kristinbivens) before sending it out to students as well as consider the design principles. We can’t expect students know everything about the university policies, even it appears on all the syllabus from their classes, but they may never read it. We also can’t pretend students know how we plan our weekly/course schedule for the whole semester in the beginning. Therefore, when we create a liquid syllabus, we need to create student-centered content.
Joseph Bartolotta
1 year ago
Jiaxin, This is a very interesting study about a topic I had not heard much about before. Like others, I was unfamiliar with the “liquid syllabus” before (although I have been using a version of the interactive syllabus for a few years now and found it helpful). My question is this: you are focusing, rightly in my opinion, on the online student experience since those students are remote and perhaps in more need of a humanizing interaction than face-to-face students. Do you plan to extend this research to see how face-to-face students experience the liquid syllabus as well? I’d be interested to see if the impact of the liquid syllabus on student is as profound as what you found in your heuristic testing here.
Thank you for your comments and for sharing your interactive syllabus with me! I like your idea of adapting the syllabus into a questionnaire related to syllabus content, which could better understand students’ needs and remind them of the syllabus content. Yes, I focused on the online synchronous class in this study. I think it is interesting to see the impact of the liquid syllabus on students in onsite class. I’d like to hear students’ learning experience by using liquid syllabus in different class modalities if our program could offer onsite sessions as well.
I have not heard of a liquid syllabus before. Did you create it as a Google Doc?
Perhaps I could not hear well, but what usability heuristic form did you use? What were the heuristics the participants rated? Also, could you provide a resource to the product rating card you used? I apologize again, I may not be able to hear the audio too clearly, but I am very interested in these usability evaluation methods.
Hi Jessica, thank you for your questions! Looks like my transcript is not accessible (sorry for the inconvenience, I attached my transcript here).
I created the liquid syllabus by Google Site. You can create a liquid syllabus (public website) by any visual editor – WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), for example, Google site, WordPress, WIX, Squarespace, Weebly, etc.
The usability heuristic form is Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design (developed by Nielsen and Molich in 1990, and later refined by Nielsen in 1994), which was used for evaluating and identifying the usability problems in the UI design of the liquid syllabus. The 0.28 is the total average score from the five participants.
The product reaction card developed by Microsoft in 2002 was used for testing visual appeal and getting a sense of students’ overall reaction to the liquid syllabus. The full list includes 118 words (better to modify it, I attached mine here). I asked each participant to choose the top five words that are most closely associated with their experience in using the site with explanations.
Jiaxin, it seems as though the students you asked enjoyed the liquid syllabus for 2311! I had not heard of liquid syllabi before, so I am intrigued. Did any of the students have learning accommodations or request any? You include some content about accessibility. Since it’s a webpage, did you run WAVE tests on it? If so, what were the results?
Thank you for your comments! I don’t have any students tell me the accessibility concerns/issues relevant to the liquid syllabus. It’s might because I provide both the traditional syllabus on the Blackboard (because the University requires to submit a PDF copy of course syllabus) and the liquid syllabus, considering most of the students are more familiar with the traditional format. The result shows even liquid syllabus is new to them, more students willing to use the liquid syllabus than the PDF/DOC.
I cannot remember how many students exactly had learning accommodations. However, every semester, I could receive at least 2-4 emails from the Student Disability Services (SDS) for the two sessions I’m teaching. This fall semester I received 3 emails from SDS, and one student emailed me for discussing accommodations in class at the beginning of the semester. I didn’t run the WAVE tests. I only tested the screen reader (Safari and Chrome on Mac) and asked my friends to use the website to finish some tasks after I created it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention to make it more accessible!
Like other commenters, the term liquid syllabus is new to me, as is the modifier “liquid” to signify a type of documentation. In your experience, is the metaphorical weight of “liquid” intended to signal the accessibility of syllabus? What does “liquid” add more than if we called it, say, a “cloud syllabus” or “accessible syllabus” or “web syllabus” some other term?
Thank you for your questions! “’Liquid content’ as a term refers to web content that is highly shared – where the desire for sharing is driven by contagious or ‘viral ideas’ within the content” (Roundhouse – What is Liquid Content and Why it Matters for Brands). The term “liquid syllabus” was brought up by Dr. Michelle Pacansky-Brock as “a humanizing element for online courses.”
I think the main features of “liquid syllabus” are humanized content (inclusive), equitable, and accessible. Traditional syllabi need to follow the guidelines or template by the institution on how to draft the course policy. For many instructors and their institutions, a syllabus serves as a contract between student-instructor; as a permanent record of academic documentation; and as a learning tool for students (Parkes & Harris, 2010). Liquid syllabus (with pictures, welcome video, and supportive words) increased learning experience and students’ engagement with the course material. One participant told me, she preferred to scroll a clickable webpage than look up information from a 10+ pages word doc syllabus. Syllabus stored on Drive may still need to log in or have the institutional account to access. A liquid syllabus could be viewed at any time on any device (equitable and accessible). Students don’t need a laptop to check the course schedule or don’t need to zoom in on the PDF/DOC file on the 6” cell phone screen (mobile responsiveness).
Parkes, J., & Harris, M. B. (2010). The purposes of a syllabus. College Teaching, 50(2), 55-61.
thank you for sharing this beautiful poster and audio presentation. your study design and your research purpose strike me as so wonderfully meaningful. the idea of a “liquid syllabus” like yours sounds so useful. it’s no surprise that students seem to love it!
what advice or resources would you have for instructors who want to incorporate this style of syllabus into their teaching but aren’t sure where to start? what best practices would you emphasize?
also, what are your next steps with this research?
I was going to ask a similar question, what would be the best way to go about creating / designing a liquid syllabus. Should they all include key items similar to how traditional syllabuses typically include the same sections every year.
Thank you for your question! I include the key items similar to the traditional syllabus. At the same time, rethinking the connection between each element and make changes could make it easier to read. For example, the Accommodations and University Resources are two separated sections from the template. I put them together in the liquid syllabus with a sentence added in-between “Everyone learns differently. If you are facing a barrier to access in my class, I invite you to talk with me about it by email or during my office hour so that we can address it together. My priority is your success in this course” in bold. The bold text will become the focal point for this section. Then, they can look at the Official paragraph about Accommodations from the university above or the list of University Resources below.
Thank you for your comments! Briefly, I’d suggest instructors with the traditional syllabus ready to start with a sitemap and information architecture (How many pages? What’s the connection? What’s the organization, arrangement, and structure of the webpage?) Secondly, record a short welcome video to introduce yourself, the class, and this liquid syllabus. Thirdly, choose a platform (you may find various templates online and can make changes on it) to drag, upload, copy, and paste the information from the traditional syllabus. Fourthly, edit the content in a supportive tone and apply design principles to highlight content or create information flow. After that, testing the website. Finally, email it to students a week before the semester begins. Pre-semester connection is the key, because that will influence their perception about the instructor and the class.
I’d also suggest using embedded code or plugins on the liquid syllabus for student-instructor interaction. Not all the students are available during the scheduled office hour to discuss the questions/concerns they have. Therefore, I provided my other availabilities on Calendly (or Doodle, Appointlet, etc), and I integrated it with Zoom and my institution email. By embedding it on my liquid syllabus, students can check my availabilities (without emailing me) and make an appointment with me by simply click on the page (without emailing me). After the student confirms the time, both of us will receive a confirmation email and the reserved time will be automatically added to my outlook calendar.
These resources from Dr. Pacansky-Brock might be helpful. One is the instructions created on a public Canvas course, the other is her own liquid syllabus for her History of Still Photography asynchronously class.
I received lots of feedback and inspirational questions from the reviewers and commenters. The first thing I could do is to improve my current liquid syllabus to create better teaching materials. Then, I’m rethinking the limitations of this study. The survey was only sent out once through the semester. If I do this research again, I could survey more than once through the semester to track students’ use of liquid syllabus, or maybe testing the liquid syllabus on different devices. I also thought about creating a comparative study on how the modalities of syllabi would influence the learning experience (one session use the traditional syllabus only, the other use the liquid syllabus only).
thank you very much– this is all great information for anyone interested in trying this out.
I think the mixed-methods you used very effective at being able to obtain a broad understanding of how students perceived and used the liquid syllabus. Well done.
Thanks for sharing your research, Jiaxin! I love the concept of “liquid syllabus.” According to your survey and usability testing results, are there any potential problems of liquid syllabus? If so, how would instructors address those issues and create a liquid syllabus that is more accessible, engaging, and ethical?
Thank you for your questions! My survey and usability testing results suggested two improvements to my syllabus. 1. I added major project titles on the Weekly Schedule to make elements visible (providing time frames for each project). 2. I combined the Attendance and Participation section into one with an explanation to improve consistency and standard.
To create an accessible, engaging, and ethical liquid syllabus, we need to create user-centered content. It’s also necessary to run a test (e.g. WAVE test suggested by kristinbivens) before sending it out to students as well as consider the design principles. We can’t expect students know everything about the university policies, even it appears on all the syllabus from their classes, but they may never read it. We also can’t pretend students know how we plan our weekly/course schedule for the whole semester in the beginning. Therefore, when we create a liquid syllabus, we need to create student-centered content.
Jiaxin, This is a very interesting study about a topic I had not heard much about before. Like others, I was unfamiliar with the “liquid syllabus” before (although I have been using a version of the interactive syllabus for a few years now and found it helpful). My question is this: you are focusing, rightly in my opinion, on the online student experience since those students are remote and perhaps in more need of a humanizing interaction than face-to-face students. Do you plan to extend this research to see how face-to-face students experience the liquid syllabus as well? I’d be interested to see if the impact of the liquid syllabus on student is as profound as what you found in your heuristic testing here.
Great work!
Thank you for your comments and for sharing your interactive syllabus with me! I like your idea of adapting the syllabus into a questionnaire related to syllabus content, which could better understand students’ needs and remind them of the syllabus content. Yes, I focused on the online synchronous class in this study. I think it is interesting to see the impact of the liquid syllabus on students in onsite class. I’d like to hear students’ learning experience by using liquid syllabus in different class modalities if our program could offer onsite sessions as well.