Peer Review

Create a Liquid Syllabus

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Dec 19, 2021 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

This is a self-paced, public Canvas course that will walk you through the steps to create a Liquid Syllabus. A Liquid Syllabus is an accessible, public website that incorporates a brief, friendly welcome video and course information written in welcoming, student-centered language (Pacansky-Brock et al, 2020; Pacansky-Brock, 2017, 2014). When used in conjunction with culturally responsive teaching pedagogy, the Liquid Syllabus contributes to creating a more equitable learning environment for all students.

Type of Material:

Online Course - using Google Sites

Recommended Uses:

A thorough set of resources to ensure that a website is suitably set up and optimized for students - as such, for an educator delivering an online course.

The material can be used either in in-class activities, individual, team, lecture or self-paced in a teacher preparation course.

Technical Requirements:

The website works well with either google or mozilla.

Limited - modern browsers will be able to run it no problem.

Videos embedded, Google slides

Accessible on a phone although there are obviously issues such as tables not being optimized for web browsing. This site can be used to check: https://mobilemoxie.com/tools/mobile-page-test/

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Users will be able to identify the elements of a liquid syllabus
Users will be able to design a liquid syllabus
Users will be able to analyze if they have included all elements of a liquid syllabus in one of theirs.

Target Student Population:

Professional

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

It is recommended that users know a bit about how to design a syllabus. Later on, they will be making adjustments to their original syllabus and will transform it into a liquid syllabus.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

Slides are very well produced and of an academic nature

Videos add value and add value to the slides

Examples in the slides point to useful resources such as padlet to support student engagement

Many concepts are well backed up with academic references. The strengths need to be read alongside concerns for this to make sense.

The website develops the idea of a liquid syllabus. Educators will be highly benefitted by studying this course since it provides important elements on how they can create a more humanistic syllabus.

Concerns:

Many references relate to the author's previous work with few other sources to support her work although her references appear to be credible.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The learning objectives are as follows:

Users will be able to identify the elements of a liquid syllabus
Users will be able to design a liquid syllabus
Users will be able to analyze if they have included all elements of a liquid syllabus in one of theirs.

The material is possible to be used with either in service or pre service teachers. Other professionals interested in teaching will see a great opportunity to explore apply the concept of a liquid syllabus.

An instructor can use the material in different ways. For example, Select some weeks of the course and exclusively dedicate that time to the study of the liquid syllabus.

It requires a lot of time from the educator to move and tweak the resources

It is a comprehensive set of resources and further links to support this process.

As such it underpins learning goals (as a platform) rather than allows learning to take place - it upskills the educator as opposed to the learner.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

All the development of the topic occurs in Canva. The organizing in this platform happens in pages. Therefore, any user will find it easy to move from one page to the other. The pages have been clearly labeled and there is a logical sequence of the material.

Very easy to navigate (on a computer). Clear instructions on what we need to do with appropriate colours, text etc. Consistency is evident throughout

No dead links found.

Other Issues and Comments:: None - There's a lot to like on this site. The positive outlook from the lead educator and in the underlying messages she is trying to promote are valuable and humanistic.
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