Courses & Assessment policy suite

The Courses and Assessment Rules and Policies (Policy on Courses; Policy on Assessment) are completed and the 2013 Manual is nearly finished.

Reviewers from across the University recently provided feedback:  from improving wording to fixing inconsistencies, they have done a great job. Their feedback has been addressed and the interfaces with the existing Program Management and the Admissions & Enrolment suites are now being checked.

Underlying questions for users include:

  1. Does the new suite contribute a positive policy approach for UoN, one that assists in ensuring better outcomes for our present and future community of students and staff
  2. Are requirements for 'administrivia' minimised? Each process should be effective and contribute to achieving positive outcomes.

The Streamlining Academic Policy working party is now matching academic policy to the Threshold Standards and will recommend to Senate ways of demonstrating UoN meets them. 
We have separately started a case study related to one issue. Future trials will include reports from Faculties on the outcomes of policy implementation and issue -related case studies.  Typical questions for the future could be:

  •  do all double badged courses meet the policy requirements;
  •  do all level 7 programs meet the learning outcomes;
  •  are all students admitted according to policy;
  •  if post-assessment feedback was appropriate and provided to students according to the policy etc.

More on MOOCs

More on the progression in teaching from chalk & talk to Massive Open Online Courses:  academics will still be essential for exciting learners' interests. What other lessons should we take from the apparent MOOC successes?     http://chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-Know-About-MOOCs/133475/

Openness - the Courses & Assessment policy suite addresses auditing courses, being able to 'attend' a course without being enrolled in it. But, you can't currently access course content on BlackBoard at UoN  if you are not enrolled. Should the UoN community be able to access the content of all current BlackBoard sites? And the implications of a more open approach internally, such as this?

Publicity & potential student databases - allowing public access to academic offerings provides tasters for potential students. It could also provide considerable positive publicity for a University and a very valuable database of self-selected potential students [S. Douglas].  Should Senate investigate this and actively support the development of more online courses with open access?