Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning

We are pleased to announce a significant enhancement to select Canvas courses for the Spring 2026 semester: the automatic inclusion of a Common Syllabus Module.

This module, titled "Student Resources and Policies," is designed to benefit both students and faculty by providing a centralized location for essential, current, and required information such as university policy statements, important dates, and student resources. By moving this information into a stand-alone module, faculty may remove the information from their syllabus, thus making a shorter document focused on the important information for the specific course.

This work builds from a pilot in Fall 2024 that began adding policy information and student resources into every course within a specific college upon creation of the course. For Spring 2026 courses, the Common Syllabus Module will automatically populate in the following colleges and departments:

Each semester, the module will be updated to reflect the most accurate policy statements, dates, and resources for students.  A phased approach is being used to deploy the Common Module at scale across UWM with the following tentative schedule:

If an instructor wants to add the Common Syllabus Module to their course but were not yet part of the automatic population and creation, they are welcome to import it into their Canvas course. Instructions on how to do so are provided in this KB resource: How to Import UWM Student Resources and Policies Module from Canvas Commons

Thank you to the many faculty and staff who provided content for the module, shared dates and resources, and helped to review and finalize the content for the Spring 2026 iteration. It is through the cooperation and efforts of many that this initial release was possible. Thank you for the support and engagement. 

Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning
414-229-4319
2033 E. Hartford Ave., B50
Milwaukee, WI 53211