What it is

Explore Syllabi is a tab on the title detail page that shows you real syllabi from peer instructors who have assigned the same book. You can review how other faculty structured their courses — learning outcomes, topic outlines, assigned materials — without leaving the page where you're evaluating the title.

The data comes from Open Syllabus, a database of 30+ million publicly available syllabi from 6,500+ institutions.

What you'll see

Each syllabus card can include:

Course name and course code
University/institution
Year posted
Course description
Learning outcomes
Assigned materials
Topic outline (when available)
Assessment strategy (when available)
Assignment schedule (when available)
AI policy (when available)

The most complete, useful syllabi appear first. As you scroll, cards may have fewer fields; that reflects variation in the underlying data, not an omission in what Explore Syllabi is presenting.

Why use it

A table of contents tells you what a book covers. Peer syllabi tell you how other instructors are actually teaching with it, including how they sequenced the material, what they paired it with, and what outcomes they wrote around it. That's the kind of context that makes an adoption decision feel grounded.

FAQs

Q: Who can see Explore Syllabi?

Explore Syllabi is available to verified US instructors. You become verified when a publisher approves your first sample request. Until then, you'll see the Explore Syllabi tab on the page, but the syllabus content will be gated.

Q: Why doesn't the Explore Syllabi tab appear on some titles?

The tab only shows when a title has at least 3 qualifying syllabi in the Open Syllabus dataset. Newer publications or niche subjects may not have enough peer usage indexed yet.

Q: Where does this data come from?

From Open Syllabus, a nonprofit that aggregates publicly posted syllabi. All syllabi shown are already publicly available — we're surfacing them in context, not publishing anything that wasn't already out there.

Q: How are syllabi selected and ordered?

Syllabi are ranked by how much useful course design detail they contain and their currency. Those with more information appear first. A syllabus moves higher in the list for having:

A topic outline (how the course is sequenced)
An assessment strategy (how grading is structured)
An assignment schedule (when readings fall across the semester)
An AI policy — rare, but its presence is a strong indicator the syllabus is current

When two syllabi have the same level of detail, the more recent one comes first. Every syllabus shown meets a minimum bar: course name, code, institution, year, description, and learning outcomes. Purely logistical information, such as office hours, classroom location, and contact details, are not displayed.

Q: How many syllabi will I see?

Up to 60 per title.

Q: Is this available on my school's branded site?

Right now, Explore Syllabi is available at bookshelf.vitalsource.com. If your institution has a school-branded VitalSource site, you can still access the full experience by logging in at bookshelf.vitalsource.com.

Q: Is this available outside the US?

Explore Syllabi is currently available to US instructors only.

Q: Can I share a syllabus I find here?

The syllabi are view-only. All are publicly available on Open Syllabus.

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What is Explore Syllabi?