Our course syllabi have many purposes. From the students' point of view, it provides them with the requirements and expectations needed to succeed in our courses. Making this information easily visible is one of the most important things we can do for our students at the start of each class.

Canvas has a Syllabus tool that has some flexibility in the way we can show students our course syllabus. Instead of a document, the Canvas Syllabus is a web-based version of your syllabus. There are three main components to the Canvas Syllabus:

An editable space at the top of the Syllabus that allows you to enter information specific to your course.
A course summary that lists all of your published assignments and calendar items in chronological order.
A calendar.

Below are Do's and Don'ts for using the Canvas Syllabus tool.

Don't do this:

Copy and paste a multi-page syllabus into the editable space at the top of the Syllabus tool.

Why not?

This causes the list of published assignments to be pushed way down to the bottom, essentially hiding it from students or making them have to scroll and scroll and scroll to use this very valuable tool.

Do this instead:

For a short syllabus (one page or less), copy and paste your information into the editable space at the top of the Syllabus tool.
For a longer syllabus (more than one page), upload your document into the editable space. You can choose to make it auto-open. Read about how to set a document to auto-open here.
Make sure your syllabus document is Accessible (use headers and lists, don't use extra spaces, use alt text for images, format table properties to make the top row a header).

Here's a quick video to introduce you to the Canvas Syllabus tool:

526 - Courses: Creation & Management from Instructure Community on Vimeo.