Courses

Departments are responsible for establishing internal protocols for conducting a thorough curricular review well in advance of the CAS’ quarterly submission deadlines. Internal departmental reviews should be conducted within the term prior to the CAS’ deadlines. The Department Curricular Coordinator (DCC) is responsible for overseeing curricular review for their unit. The DCC should be familiar with college and university protocols and the mechanics of CourseLeaf. Consult your department head and/or DCC for guidance.

The CASCC reviews departmentally approved proposals submitted by the term deadline. Those proposals are reviewed and then, upon CASCC approval, are forwarded to the University of Oregon Curricular Committee (UOCC) by the end of the term for university-level review the following term. 

The UOCC reviews all CASCC-endorsed proposals submitted before the start of term. If endorsed by the UOCC by the end of the term, the course change will be included on the UOCC’s quarterly report to the Senate, and voted upon at the last Senate meeting of term. Approved changes take effect the following fall.

In summary, the University Senate votes on course proposals that have successfully cleared review committees. The three-level curricular reviews are department review, college-level review, and university Senate-level review. 

If you are unable to view the chart above, try zooming into the document or refreshing the page.

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/cascd/files/2019/09/Course-Proposal-Review-Process.pdf” width=”100%” height=”500px” download=”all” ] Course Proposal Flowchart

How to use the CourseLeaf system. 

Check on Your Proposal:

The status of any course can be found here. If you are looking for a specific course, you can enter its code and number in the search bar.  You can also search for just your department code and it will bring back all of that department’s courses in Courseleaf.  You can then sort by workflow and see which courses are at the UOCC consideration level and which are still with the CASCC.  Courses with the CASCC are either at the “AS Curric Coord Initial Review” or “AS Curric Coord Final Review” stages of workflow.

The Course Inventory Management (CIM) module of CourseLeaf is the form used to store information about a course. Faculty members should fill out all fields in order to submit a complete proposal.

Guidelines for addressing course duplication or overlap: 

Please note, the purpose of due diligence is to ensure that students are not given credit for two courses with considerable overlap. In addition, as some courses may appear to overlap given their subject matter, it is important to document the ways in which they are different so it is clear to students and accreditors. The purpose of due diligence is NOT to seek permission or support from another unit for developing a course in a specific area or to limit who can teach what subjects. Please include due diligence of email exchanges with other relevant units from within the past five years.

Guidelines for approval of online/hybrid courses. 

Supplemental information required for review of graduate online and hybrid courses. 

The policies and workload expectations for online, hybrid, and traditional courses are all the same. Departments that wish to create a new online or hybrid course, or make changes to an existing online or hybrid course, must complete a course proposal through CourseLeaf.

Senate Motion US15/16-22, passed 4/6/2016 states: 

New undergraduate online and hybrid classes require a description from proposers of how classroom time will be replaced with alternative forms of engagement of students with the academic content; student and instructor engagement description is also required. Providing students with class presentations alone will not suffice to account for engagement. 

Existing undergraduate online and hybrid classes will be required to follow the same model as new classes and will be reviewed for equivalence and appropriate assignment of credit hours.

The UOCC regards the following as appropriate alternative forms of engagement to substitute for contact hours:

• • Recorded lectures, synchronous or asynchronous
  • Instructor moderated discussion boards
  • Synchronous learning platform activity with instructor
  • Projects and instructor feedback
  • Quizzes and instructor feedback
  • Other activities with direct instructor interaction

The following non-classroom activities do NOT qualify as appropriate student engagement substitution for classroom time:

• • Assignments
  • Online or in-person office hours
  • Announcements
  • Posting of supplemental content materials

The syllabus needs to describe the online activity with clarity. One example of each activity must be provided for review. Proposals for courses that will be taught in an online format ONLY should supply an online Student Engagement Inventory (SEI) form. Courses that will be taught BOTH online and in a traditional classroom setting – known as ‘hybrid’ courses – should provide one SEI for each format.

Multi-listed courses. 

Experimental courses are not required to go through the traditional course proposal process. Experimental courses may be created and taught for a maximum of three years before they are required to go through the traditional course proposal review process.

If you expect to teach an experimental course just once (e.g., taking advantage of the expertise of a visiting faculty member), then you need not concern yourself more with the CAS course proposal process. No approval beyond the department level is required.  However, an experimental course is often used as a pilot that may later be submitted for conversion to a regular numbered course.

You can smooth the course review and approval process by drafting proposal materials in conjunction with the pilot offering and revising them based on experience.  This includes explicit learning objectives, a detailed syllabus, and a tentative student engagement inventory (SEI). Initially some of this may be guesswork.  Our ideas of how a course will progress, the ways in which students are prepared (or not), and how long it takes for them to master some material  often require adjustment.   Few plans survive a first offering intact, but revisions to a tentative plan are an effective way to capture details that will ultimately be required in the course proposal.

Often a pilot offering as an experimental course is made concurrent with the proposal for permanent course number.   While complete materials are still required with the proposal, experience in the pilot offering may lead to some revisions, particularly in the syllabus but sometimes also in other materials.  Revised materials may be attached to the CourseLeaf entry while a course proposal is under consideration.

NOTE: Experimental courses may not be used in program proposals. All courses that will be required for a program must be permanent courses. However, a program may move through the approval process at the same time that constituent courses are also being considered for approval.

A department may request to drop a course by using CourseLeaf to submit a deactivation. First, however, it should consult with any other academic programs whose curricula and/or enrollments may be adversely affected by the change (e.g. if the course being dropped serves as a prerequisite to a critical course in another program). Once a course has been dropped, its number cannot be used for another topic for seven years.

Courses that are not taught for three years are dropped from the catalog. A course that was dropped fewer than three years ago may be reinstated; however, no changes can be made to the course in conjunction with reinstatement. To reinstate a course, send a brief explanation, along with the name of the instructor and the term they have agreed to teach the course, to Carolyn Vogt (carolynv@uoregon.edu).

If a course has not been taught for six years, it is no longer eligible for reinstatement. A new course proposal must be submitted via CourseLeaf for full curricular review.

• Considerations for graduate classes
• Criteria for 300-level group courses
• Honors criteria
• Temporary gen-ed group-satisfying courses