Course Outline Guide

Why Course Outlines?

It is essential that course outlines be handed out to students in the first class, and that you provide an electronic copy of your outline by 22nd February 2008 so that students can have access prior to the semester commencing.

Although many staff convey a lot of information in class, the provision of a written course outline ensures that all students in a course have a single document which clearly informs them of topics, assessments, expectations and the like, and which allows them to make informed decisions about what courses they do and how to manage their course workload.
A well-prepared course outline is also extremely useful for teaching staff in clarifying their teaching approaches and content, and for other staff who are teaching courses that students also take.

What is Needed?

The Guide attached is designed to help staff prepare their outlines. Staff may choose to:

• Use it as a template, simply filling in the material and deleting the yellow highlighted instructions, or
• Use it as a checklist of areas that should be included, and design their own course outline.

A.    Administrative Information

1. A schedule of topics or lectures (with dates or weeks)
2. A listing of teaching staff, including contact details, and availability for out of class contact
3. Units of credit for the course
4. Teaching times and locations
5. Contact hours per week
6. Whether the course is parallel taught with any other courses
7. A statement on academic honesty & plagiarism (at present that must be the statement found at 5. in the template in full)
8. A listing of any computing requirements that the student will need outside of access to the labs
9. Safety information, made up of generic OH&S information (see 7. in template) and any course-specific risks or safety requirements
10. A list of readings, books, internet sites, etc. that the students are expected to access over or before the course
11. A short statement on how the course is evaluated and developed (which tells students about how their feedback, eg through CATEI or informally, has influenced the course’s development)
12. Any administrative matters such as expectations as to attendance, how students will be contacted (eg by email), procedures for submission of assignments, procedures around late assignments, extensions and Special Consideration.

B.    Educational Information

1. A concise statement of course aims, which provide an overview of the course, including the general purpose of the course and how it relates to other courses (if it is part of a sequence of courses) or to the whole degree
2. A statement on student learning outcomes which shows what the students should know, understand and be able to do by the end of the course. These should be specific, and should be able to be related to the assessments. They should also be related to the UNSW or COFA Graduate Attributes.
3. A List of the teaching strategies used in the course, with a brief statement on how these strategies support the course aims and learning outcomes.
4. Information on assessment, including all assignments, weighting, criteria for marking, relationship to learning outcomes and due dates.

Why Educational Information?

The material on student learning outcomes, teaching strategies, and course aims is designed to provide students with an opportunity to have a better understanding of what is expected of them, to be able to develop their own strategies to assist their learning in the light of the approach and expectations of the lecturer, and to be proactive in their learning, not needing to wait for lectures and tutorials to identify what is important for them to learn. If they know where the course is going, they can actively manage and assess their own progress.

What Next?

The completed Outline must be handed out to students in their first class, and an electronic copy must be sent via email to the School's Executive Assistant by the 13th February 2009.

UNSW policy requires that students have access to course outlines by the beginning of Week 0, which in COFA will be via the virtual handbook, through a password protected site.
Further assistance in writing course outlines is available at the Learning & Teaching website.