For course syllabi, I create two iLabs, one for the public version of the syllabus and one as a workspace for students. The former contains the rationale, readings, and assignments, while the latter contains a Bulletin Board and Document Center for student work. In the public iLabs, I use the List Tool to create different parts of the syllabus, such as the dates and orientation for each class and the specifics about the assignments (see an example at http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/pragmatic/).

Within each class session, I use Inquiry Units for the major content. There are several advantages to this approach:

• information specific to a course offering, such as the dates and place of the class is separated from the substantive content, such as readings and activities. This facilitates updating and re-use of materials;
• the Inquiry Units can be used as is, edited directly, or customized as needed using the spin-off feature;
• customization can also be done via meta-information in the syllabus entry;
• students can spin-off Inquiry Units directly from the syllabus for assignments or projects;
• multiple Inquiry Units can be included for a given class session, thus allowing different grain sizes for activities.

I considered using iframes (ilayers) for the inquiry units in the syllabus, but there are the familiar problem with frames, that the address bar shows the last object loaded, not the syllabus url. Also, some browsers don't display the frames properly.