DEV-450 syllabus - Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I Updated: 2024

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Constructing a syllabus is an important component of the course design process. The following materials reflect a research-supported framework to help create a pathway to success in your course. Each semester, Innovative Learning reviews the syllabus framework, identifying needed updates and resources.

The Word files linked below outline Required and Recommended components for your syllabus. Many of these components are already in your Brightspace shell. They just need updates specific to your course. The files below include language that comes directly from University policies or is suggested by the University Senate or specific units. Other sample language reflects an autonomy-supportive classroom that can influence student perception and performance (Young-Jones, Levesque, Fursa & McCain 2019). Italicized text indicates notes to instructors. Plain text provides examples of language.

Tips for creating your syllabus:

• Don’t revise what you don’t have to. Resources listed under University Policies and Statements and the Student Services widget in the Brightspace shell are updated each semester and automatically populated. You may call these resources to your students’ attention.
• Instructors cannot see the Student Services widget in Brightspace, but you can see the most latest version of it here.
• Feel free to add additional resources that might help your students to your syllabus.

Once your syllabus is complete, please also upload it to Purdue’s Course Insights syllabus archiving system. For questions related to the syllabus framework, email innovativelearningteam@purdue.edu.

Note: The Purdue syllabus guidelines are influenced by Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT) and the resources available through Purdue’s Brightspace learning management system (LMS). It also addresses criteria of the valid and reliable syllabus rubric published by the University of Virginia Center for Teaching Excellence (Palmer, Bach & Streifer 2017). Components fall under five categories: 1) Essential course information, instructor contact information, and course description, 2) Specific, student-centered learning outcomes and objectives that are clear, articulated and measurable (Bristol et al 2019), 3) Assessment strategies for all graded assignments that make explicit connections between learning outcomes, activities, and content, 4) Pedagogical approaches and activities that help students achieve the course outcomes and objectives, and 5) Policies and approaches that foster engaging, student-centered learning environments.

References

Adena Young-Jones, Chantal Levesque, Sophie Fursa & Jason McCain (2019): Autonomy-supportive language in the syllabus: supporting students from the first day. Teaching in Higher Education. DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2019.1661375.

Levesque-Bristol, C., Flierl, M., Zywicki, C., Parker, L.C., Connor, C., Guberman, D., Nelson, D., Maybee, C., Bonem, E., FitzSimmons, J., & Lott, E. (2019). Creating Student-Centered Learning Environments and Changing Teaching Culture: Purdue University’s IMPACT Program. National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).

Palmer, M. S., Bach, D. J., & Streifer, A. C. (2014). Measuring the promise: A learning‐focused syllabus rubric. To Strengthen the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, 33 (1), 14-36.

This year did not start off great for Salesforce, with an unusual level of turbulence and uncertainty surrounding the company. But as the year comes to a close, Salesforce finds itself in surprisingly good shape financially: Its stock is up over 96% year-to-date. Earlier this year, such an outcome would have seemed impossible to imagine.

The bad news started rolling in even before the new year began, when co-CEO Bret Taylor, who many speculated was being groomed to be heir apparent to Marc Benioff, quite suddenly announced he was leaving the company at the end of November. A week later, Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield announced he, too, was stepping down. Losing two key executives in less than a week would be a huge hit to any company, but it would be just the start of an onslaught of bad news for the CRM giant.

As the year began, we learned that activist investors were, well, quite active inside the company. This included Elliott Management, Starboard Value, ValueAct Capital, Inclusive Capital and Third Point. When activists show up, they usually have a strong opinion on how to “fix” a company, and this would be no different.

First, we learned that Salesforce was bringing in three new board members, which felt like a way to appease the activists — especially because one of them was Mason Morfit, CEO and chief investment officer of ValueAct, one of those very same activists.

Activists typically pressure the company to cut costs, and in corporate terms, that usually means cutting staff. Sure enough, Salesforce soon announced that it was cutting 10% of its workforce, or 7,000 people, on January 4, 2023. The excuse was that it had overhired during the pandemic and this was a correction, but it could also have been throwing the activists a cost-cutting bone.

Either way, reports suggested the company didn’t handle the layoffs well, engineers were being pressured, and Benioff began preaching about going back to the office after embracing work from home, and what Salesforce called the “Digital HQ,” during the pandemic. The company’s reputation as a progressive, employee-friendly organization took a big hit.

Salesforce has announced plans to acquire Spiff, a platform that automates commission management for sales teams. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2017, Spiff serves up a low-code interface designed to make it easy for businesses to create a sales compensation plan that automatically updates based on personnel meeting their pre-agreed targets. With native integrations for the common enterprise CRM and ERP systems, Spiff says it can handle the most intricate commission structures, including whatever conditions may be in place to trigger payments, while sales representatives can see what commission they’re due in real time.

The Salt Lake City-based startup had raised north of $110 million in its six-year history, including cash injections from Salesforce’s very own venture capital firm Salesforce Ventures, which invested in Spiff’s Series B round in 2021 and led its $50 million Series C round earlier this year.

Image Credits: Spiff

Once the acquisition closes, which is expected in the first few months of 2024, Salesforce says that Spiff will be put to work within its Sales Performance Management software, a CRM-connected product that connects customer and sales team data.

It’s worth noting that the two companies have a history that goes beyond the previous equity investment, with Spiff making itself available on the Salesforce AppExchange for several years already.

The deal also constitutes the latest in a line of ecosystem companies that Salesforce has eventually brought in-house. Back in September Salesforce acquired Airkit, a low-code platform for building AI customer service agents. Not only did Airkit’s founders have a previous exit to Salesforce, having sold a big data startup called RelateIQ for $390 million in 2014, but Salesforce Ventures had invested in Airkit over several rounds since its founding in 2017. And similar to Spiff, Airkit was also available on AppExchange.

So it’s clear that Salesforce continues to see tried-and-tested ecosystem companies as a safe bet for its M&A endeavors, with “low-code” playing a key factor too.

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When crafting your syllabus, confirm that you are adhering to the credit hour policy in your course design.

Per the Academic Affairs Board, all transcripted courses (i.e., courses that appear on a student’s transcript and where at least one student is enrolled during the course offering) must upload a syllabus to FAR to provide continual support for our students and alumni. Syllabi must be uploaded by the second Friday of each term. Please consult the Steps for Uploading Syllabi for instructions. 

Part-time instructors do not have access to FAR. If you are part-time at Hope, please send your syllabus to your office manager. If you don't have an academic office manager or if your office manager is unavailable, send your syllabus to the systems administrator, Hillary DeBoer (deboerh@hope.edu). Office managers and the systems administrator can upload the syllabus for you.

View syllabi and course design resources on the CTL website  

Identifying and Contact Information

• Hope College's name
• Semester
• Course title and number with section number
• Course meeting times and location
• Name of instructor
• Instructor's office location, phone number, school email and office hours

Course Description & Preparation

• Course description from current course catalog with credit hours
• Pre-requisites/co-requisites
• Required materials
• Methods/modes of instruction
• Student Learning Outcomes for the course, program and general education

Evaluation

• Major course assignments and weight or value of assignment toward final grade
• Grading scale (grading policy; description of how final grade will be determined)
• Specific course attendance/ participation policy
  • Note to instructors: Throughout the semester, if you are ever concerned about student behavior or attendance in a course, share your concerns through a behavior report. If students miss an excessive number of classes, encourage the student to consider withdrawing from a course and taking it at a later semester to preserve the integrity of the educational experience.
• Final test date
  • Note: According to the Hope College Faculty Handbook, "Unless some other form of assessing student progress is appropriate, all courses end with a final examination that is to be given in the two-hour block provided in the examination schedule published by the Registrar's Office. In fairness to students and other faculty, all faculty members are required to hold final examinations at the scheduled time; any variation from this requirement shall be granted only in severe emergency and with the express approval of the Provost. In the cases of individual students with schedule conflicts known in advance or students who have been prevented by illness or emergency from taking the examination at the scheduled time, their final examinations may be rescheduled at the faculty member's discretion."

Schedule

• Topics by weeks or dates
• Readings and assignments by weeks or dates

Policies

• Accommodations Policy: Disability and Accessibility Resources (DAR) has a very helpful faculty and instructional staff resource guide. In this guide are a few examples of syllabus statements. Here is one of the example statements:

  Hope College is committed to providing equitable learning environments to all students. If you have a temporary or permanent condition that requires accommodation(s) (including but not limited to: mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical,or health-related), you may call Disability and Accessibility Resources (DAR) at 616.395.7925 to schedule a meeting with a specialist or visit the DAR website to request accommodations. Reasonable accommodations are established through an interactive process among you, your instructor(s) and DAR. You may request accommodations at any point in the semester, but DAR encourages you to initiate the process early, as accommodations are not granted retroactively. Your course instructors will receive an email from DAR verifying the approved accommodations.

• Academic Integrity
  Statement from the Loading...:

  Academic Integrity is based on the principles of honesty and individual responsibility for actions. As these principles are applied to academic life at Hope College, it follows that a student will not:

  • Give, offer, or receive aid on examination other than that specifically allowed by the professor.
  • Do course work in a manner that is inconsistent with the standards of conduct set forth by the professor.
  • Falsify or fabricate data. This has particular application to laboratory work and research.
  • Engage in conduct that destroys another person's work or hinders another in their academic endeavors. This has particular application to computer files, library resources, and laboratory or studio work.
  • Knowingly represent the work of others as one’s own. This includes plagiarism

Academic Integrity statements are also a part of the student handbook and faculty handbook.

• Excessive Absence Policy 

  Hope College encourages students to regularly attend class and allows faculty to develop their own classroom attendance policies. Attendance and participation in class are vital components of a residential college experience.

View the entire Excessive Absence Policy. 

• Student Complaint

  Hope College is committed to the appropriate resolution of complaints as efficiently and effectively as possible. We believe that providing a mechanism for complaints to be heard gives us the opportunity to Strengthen our services.  Students are encouraged to speak directly to other members of the Hope community in an effort to resolve conflict and/or seek an informal resolution of the dispute directly with the other community member(s) whenever possible. Please use this form in circumstances where such resolution is not possible.

• Explanation of expected hours working on class assignments
  Instructors should ensure that instructional time (in and outside of scheduled class hours) is reflected on the syllabus. It is useful to consider our credit hour policy.

  Additionally, the Boerigter Center for Calling and Career is excited to partner with faculty to offer asynchronous or in-class sessions. These 30-60 minute sessions are facilitated, they cover content related to calling and career readiness, and often offer optional assignments for your in-class use should you choose. With additional questions or for more information, please visit the Boerigter Center's faculty webpage or email Shannon Schans at schans@hope.edu.
  
  

• Safety & Emergency Preparedness
  

  Students should dial 911 (the United States’ primary emergency response system) from any phone if they or someone else experiences a medical or mental health emergency.  Students can also contact Hope College’s Campus Safety Office (616.395.7770) in any kind of emergency situation, and Campus Safety will contact the necessary emergency response service. View instructions for specific emergency situations. Students can sign up for emergency text message alerts at

  plus.hope.edu.

• Inclement Weather
  

  Campus Safety sends emergency notification texts, including notice of weather-related closures, via the HOPE ALERT system. A decision to close campus offices and cancel classes is typically announced prior to 6:30 a.m. Find more information regarding inclement weather notifications.

Statement on Academic Assistance

The Academic Success Center (ASC) offers a variety of free services (e.g., tutoring, testing strategies, time management resources) for all students.  The ASC is located in Van Zoeren Hall — immediately adjacent to the Van Wylen Library second-floor entrance. To contact the ASC send an email to asc@hope.edu or call 616.395.7830. 

Disclaimer

• Syllabus/schedule are subject to change
• Include how students will be notified & how changes will be communicated

Optional

Diversity & Inclusion

Websites with examples of DEI and antiracist statements:

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)

Students may experience stressors that can impact both their academic experience and their personal well-being. These may include academic pressures, relationship challenges, alcohol or other drugs, financial concerns, identity development, body image, etc.

If you are experiencing similar concerns, we encourage you to seek support. Hope College Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) is a free and confidential resource. Call 616.395.7945, or visit the top floor of the Bultman Student Center to find the right form of support for you

If the source of your stressors is academic, please contact us or academic advising so we can find solutions together.

Course Syllabi Examples

Syllabi examples will be provided here starting in the 2024 spring semester.