XML-based Course Syllabi - An Electronic Implementation of the CDIO Syllabus

A syllabus forms the structure of a course (or program) offering and is used to assemble its constituents. Course websites and LMS’s, also contain similar information, and in some sense, are quite similar to course outlines or syllabi, and replicate some of the information that can also be found in administrative websites of universities. From a system perspective, this duplication and dispersion of information can be a source of confusion and hinder the set-up of an integrated workflow approach to manage all the course information for visualisation or reporting purposes. Course outlines or syllabi, whatever the support used for distribution, are essentially ”paper” documents that are most often created using word processors or limited web forms in course management systems. Currently, there is no accepted standard format for representing syllabi that could facilitate automatic production or processing of their contents. In this paper, we present a model for a specialized tool to create, edit and publish course syllabi that can be used alongside LMS’s and other administrative environments. The proposed prototype is based on XML to semantically tag the set of detailed elements of the CDIO Syllabus towards a complete and consistent implementation of an electronic syllabus. The objective is to cast the programs and course outlines into a schema, including both contents and learning outcomes, that allows the incorporation of the formulation and mechanisms for verification that the goals are fulfilled.