The Concourse Pilot Program
The best way to evaluate new technology is to test it out with a selection of members at your school. The Syllabus Geeks have prepared a simple Pilot Program that institutions can take advantage of immediately. Whether you are considering the possibility of building an in-house solution, enhancing a current campus system, or seeking a commercial solution, a Concourse pilot will help you narrow your focus.
Packages starting at $4,000 include:
- Access to Concourse and Concourse Lite in a single, dedicated installation
- Features including public views, permissions, iCal sync, mobile access, search, archival, and templates
- Every Concourse extension (i.e. reporting, files, notifications, audit, etc.)
- Hosting, backups, and maintenance
- Unlimited users and courses across two academic terms
- Instructor and administrator training sessions
- Deployment within your department, school, campus, or across the entire institution
- And more!
Many schools find that our guided pilot program assists their committee in determining what they want in a syllabus management tool, even if it's not Concourse. It's always a good time to get your pilot going. The Syllabus Geeks can have you up and running in just a few days.
Interested?
Let us know! Plus if you're one of the first 10 schools to sign up each term, we'll create your custom theme for free, a $500 value!
Your Questions Answered
Many of you get straight the point and ask about pricing, integration, faculty adoption, and archival. We're pulling no punches; each of your concerns has been directly addressed below. Also, take a moment to view our video tour and comic book style product brochure for more information about tackling these and other common challenges.
The most powerful stories come directly from our clients. If you're considering building a syllabus system, listen to the stories of two schools, Webster University, a school with 108 campuses world-wide and North Idaho College, a community college. They tell their stories in the Campus Technology sponsored webinar, Conquering a Sea of Syllabi.
Pricing Beyond the Pilot
Subscriptions are based on size (number of students) and length of contract. Clients can expect a range of $1-3/FTE for Concourse Lite and $2-4/FTE for Concourse. In addition, schools should estimate 20% more for basic integration or 50% for extensive integration in the first year.
Integration
The Syllabus Geeks continue to climb the ladder of integration success with every new partnership.
LMS: Webster University provided us our first integration success with Blackboard. The Syllabus Geeks are very familiar and adept with the process of auto dropping a URL within the LMS and look forward to partnering with schools using other learning environments. Alternatively, Concourse already provides users with the ability to insert the public syllabus URL into their course today.
SIS: We process feeds from the SIS to populate user, course, and registration data. Syllabus content can also be included, like course descriptions and policies.
Authentication: Concourse clients have had success with LDAP, Shibboleth, and portal/SSO implementations.
API: The Syllabus Geeks have not yet developed a Concourse API. While building this interface has been an area of interest, we have yet to have to explore this form of integration. We would love to make the journey through these uncharted waters with you, just contact us.
Faculty Adoption
If your faculty members use MS Word to create their syllabi, they will have no trouble with our tool. Master templates make it easier for faculty to build their own unique syllabus without having the burden or responsibility of making sure all the policies, statements, and various requirements are present and up-to-date.
With Concourse, faculty members have one place to create, store, edit, and retrieve syllabi. Cloning makes it easy to transfer data from term to term. Technical and academic administrators across the board report faculty feedback as "overwhelmingly positive." If you want to hear it for yourself, contact us and we'll put you in touch with our users.
Archiving Syllabi
We've passed the "no syllabus left behind" bill and your school reaps the benefits. Every syllabus created in Concourse is archived and available forever. Further, Concourse makes it easy upload existing (pre-Concourse) syllabi. Then you can have all of your syllabi - past and present - in a central location, accessible anytime, anyplace. A simple keyword search is all that is needed to retrieve any syllabus.