Visual Syllabus

This visual syllabus is designed to help you convey warmth and connection from the start of class. It includes sample language to describe Lumen One.

Download a Sample Visual Syllabus – for digital use

Download a Sample Visual Syllabus – for printing

Customizing the Syllabus

To customize the visual syllabus with your own photo or avatar, make a copy of the Google doc to edit for yourself. Click on the photo and then click “Edit” to open the editor. Click on the photo and then click “Replace image” on the menu bar. If you do not see the “Replace image” button, follow this video tutorial to replace the image. Ensure that your new image is centered within the editor. You will see horizontal and vertical lines appear to help you center the image.

To change the pie chart that displays your grading scheme, make a copy of this Google sheet, edit it to reflect your percentages and graded items, copy the new pie chart from the sheet, and replace it on the syllabus. Once you have pasted your new pie chart onto your syllabus, click on the pie chart and set the formatting option to “wrap text” and for the image to “Move with text” so that you can position it to your liking.

Course Calendar

This sample course calendar provides a suggested schedule for instructors adopting Lumen One for the first time. It outlines a recommended pacing of topics, learning activities, and assessment milestones to help structure the course effectively. Instructors are encouraged to adapt it to fit their specific course format, student needs, and institutional requirements. The goal is to provide a starting point that ensures comprehensive coverage of essential concepts while allowing flexibility for customization.

Sample Course Calendar

You can view the course topic list and a full list of the course learning outcomes below:

Topic List for Business Communication

Business Communication: Detailed Learning Outcomes

Instructor Guides and Resources

Each instructor guide contains at least three activities for classroom use. All activities are accompanied by an online variation that may be copied to your LMS, suitable as written, graded work for hybrid or asynchronous classes.

Make Your Own Copy

To make a copy in your own Google Drive, click the link, and sign in to your own Google account. Then click “File” to access the drop down menu and click “Make a copy.” If you do not have a Google account, click the link, click “File”, then click “Download” in your preferred format.

Video List

Module 1: Communicating in Business

Module 2: Business Writing

Module 3: Channels of Written Communication

Module 4: Using Research and Information Tools

Module 5: Visual Media

Module 6: Business Reports

Module 7: Public Speaking

Module 8: Presentations

Module 9: Social Media

Module 10: Written Messages in the Workplace

Module 11: Collaboration In and Across Teams

Module 12: Communication Challenges in Virtual Environments

Module 13: Communication Challenges in Multicultural Environments

Module 14: Career Development Essentials

Module 15: Recruiting and Selecting New Workers

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Slide Presentations

These slides contain links to our Instructor Guides within the speaker notes to enable you to easily reference corresponding information for class activities. If you share slide decks with your students but wish to leave out the links to the Instructor Guides, note that downloading a PDF version will result in a file that contains all the slides without the speaker notes.

Make Your Own Copy

To make a copy in your own Google Drive, click the link, and sign in to your own Google account. Then click “File” to access the drop down menu and click “Make a copy.” If you do not have a Google account, click the link, click “File”, then click “Download” in your preferred format.

Module 1: Communicating in Business

Module 2: Business Writing

Module 3: Channels of Written Communication

Module 4: Using Research and Information Tools

Module 5: Visual Media

Module 6: Business Reports

Module 7: Public Speaking

Module 8: Presentations

Module 9: Social Media

Module 10: Written Messages in the Workplace

Module 11: Collaboration In and Across Teams

Module 12: Communication Challenges in Virtual Environments

Module 13: Communication Challenges in Multicultural Environments

Module 14: Career Development Essentials

Module 15: Recruiting and Selecting New Workers

Guided Notes

These guided notes serve as a flexible, scaffolded tool to support student learning throughout the course, whether for note-taking in class or working through the Study Plan. Though not comprehensive, they do provide a minimal outline for students to follow and may also be useful as a study guide for students.

Guided Notes by Module

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Assignments and Discussions

In addition to the online variation of the classroom activities found in the Instructor Guides, here are alternate assignments and discussions that you can choose from. These are already linked within the Instructor Guides above.

Make Your Own Copy

To make a copy in your own Google Drive, click the link, and sign in to your own Google account. Then click “File” to access the drop down menu and click “Make a copy.” If you do not have a Google account, click the link, click “File”, then click “Download” in your preferred format.

Note about AI use in graded work:

We recognize that there is a wide range of opinions about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education. The approach of these assignments and discussions is to embrace the use of AI because it’s a powerful tool that is here to stay. In a study of over 750 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) consultants, the results indicated that using OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 for ideation and content creation improved 90% of participants’ performance by an average of 40% compared to those who did not use AI. The degree of improvement with the use of AI was greater for lower performing participants than higher performing ones. In contrast, use of AI for complex problem solving resulted in poorer performance compared to human-only output.^[1] The AI-assisted component of these assignments and discussions focus on those ideation and creation tasks rather than interpretive tasks that involve more nuanced problem solving. A summary of the study is available on the BCG website. Each AI-assisted assignment includes:

1. introductory instructions on the use of AI
2. a component stressing the importance of human review of AI content
3. a reflection on the use of AI and the student’s decision-making process in incorporating AI generated content

Assignment Package

This document contains a collection of written assignments and recommendations about how to incorporate them into your course.

AI Assisted Assignment Package

In this version of the course assignment package, all major assignments include a component where students use an artificial intelligence tool as part of their work process.

Discussions

These discussions do not require research and are intended to draw upon students’ experiences and opinions to reduce the temptation of using AI to write their submissions.

Module 1: Communicating in Business

• Employee’s Personal Social Media

Module 2: Business Writing

• Storytelling in Business

Module 3: Channels of Written Communication

• Emojis in the Workplace

Module 4: Using Research and Information Tools

• Training Artificial Intelligence

Module 5: Visual Media

• Using Altered Images

Module 6: Business Reports

• Social Media Reviews vs. Professional Critiques

Module 7: Public Speaking

• Public Speaking in Virtual Environments

Module 8: Presentations

• Is Less More?

Module 9: Social Media

• Social Media Activism

Module 10: Written Messages in the Workplace

• The Pace of Communication

Module 11: Collaboration In and Across Teams

• Constructive Feedback

Module 12: Communication Challenges in Virtual Environments

• Team Communication in Remote vs. In-Person Settings

Module 13: Communication Challenges in Multicultural Environments

• Intergenerational Communication Gaps

Module 14: Career Development Essentials

• Skill Share

Module 15: Recruiting and Selecting New Workers

• Reducing Bias in Hiring

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Question Banks for Midterms and Finals

Lumen One provides access to outcome-aligned question banks that you can use to build your own midterms and finals. We provide these banks as QTI files, a standard format that allows you to import questions, build, and customize quizzes in most learning management systems (Canvas, Blackboard, etc.). These files cannot be opened outside of an LMS. 

Note: It is your responsibility to handle question banks and answer keys securely and appropriately to prevent them from being widely available and searchable via the Internet.

Available Question Banks

The question banks include at least 4 questions for every learning outcome throughout the entire course.

• Canvas
• Blackboard
• Brightspace D2L

How to Import

You must download the question bank specific to your LMS, open the file on your computer, and follow LMS-specific instructions for importing each module.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

After downloading the QTI Zip file, you must open the main file folder in order to import the individual module files. You cannot import the main file folder.

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