About Synapse

Synapse is a course management system that centralizes a number of technology

functions that you might use normally in your classes.  It includes a(n):

1) Content Area for uploading files and documents and for making URLs available to students.

2) Assignments Area for creating assignments and attaching files to those assignments.

3) News Area for distributing information important to the moment.

4) Discussion Forum Area for online conversations within your class or with other classes.

5) Testing Area for creating online tests that can be graded by Synapse.

6) Groups Area for creating groups within your classes. Each group has Calendar, Content and Discussion areas.

7) Centralized Calendar that is tied to the areas mentioned above; the calendar can be loaded into Outlook.

8) Workbench area that can be used by the faculty member to create a course in non-live mode.

9) Final Grades Submission area to submit grades electronically to the Academic Records Office.**

10) Mass Email Function to email all of the students in a particular class.

11) Drop-Box which students can use to submit electronic assignments and into which faculty can resubmit the graded   assignment.

12) Suggestion Links interspersed throughout the Administrative modules of your courses so that you can provide feedback to the Synapse Administrator within Synapse.

13) The Inclusion of Administrative Assistants in All of Your Courses so that you can have them help you with the administration of courses.

Synapse is easy to use, intuitive, and offers a number of ways to make your use of technology in the classroom more efficient:

You can input student grades throughout the semester and have Synapse calculate the average grade. **

You can import items from previous semesters into a current/next semester.  This is especially handy if you teach the same course from semester to semester or year to year. 

Using the Workbench concept, you can setup a multi-section course once and easily copy all materials from the workbench to all sections of the course.

If you wish to use Synapse in your classes, please feel free to contact Glen Avery through email or by phone at 6150.

**Waiting for an integration with Powercampus, the campus's new administrative software before we can once again submit midterm and final grades via Synapse.

Updated March 22, 2007

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