DETERMINING LEVELS OF CHANGE

Note: Any change which affects courses, major or streams owned by another faculty or which varies inter-faculty service teaching arrangements must be signed off by the affected faculty, regardless of the assessed level of change.

 

CENTRALLY-APPROVED DEVELOPMENTS

A new course or course change will need to be centrally approved via Courses Committee if it matches at least one of the following criteria:

• creating a new course, major or stream;
• creating or changing a course, major or stream that it is in some way a collaboration with another institution in Australia or overseas;
• changing a course, major or stream that requires the significant scrutiny of a professional accreditation or registration body;
• adding or removing a major or stream to/from a course;
• deactivating a course, major or stream;
• changing the title of a course, major or stream;
• changing a course, major or stream to the extent that the Field of Education is altered from that which was originally approved;
• changing the length/duration of an existing course or major;
• significantly altering the structure of a course or the units within a course, especially where major shifts in syllabus or modes of delivery are involved.
• creating a new unit which does not replace an existing unit
• reducing the extent of service teaching in a course, major or stream

FACULTY APPROVED COURSE CHANGES

A course change is faculty approved if it does not need to be centrally approved but matches at least one of the following criteria:

• altering the structure of, or units within, a course where most of the changes only affect teaching within the faculty;
• changing who owns, or who has teaching responsibility for, a course or major;
• changing individual units to the extent that this will affect the learning outcomes of a course;
• reducing or expanding considerably the range of optional units offered within a course;
• creating a new course which is a subdivision/entity of an existing course;  for example, creating a graduate certificate or graduate diploma from within an already approved masters course;
• deactivating or replacing a unit that is core in a course taught by another teaching area within the faculty.
• changing a unit that is core in a course taught by another teaching area within the faculty
• changing the Field of Education of a unit
• changing the assessment type of a unit (pass/fail, grade mark).

 

LIMITED CHANGES

 

All other changes are deemed limited and may include one or more of the following:

 

• creating a new unit which directly and completely replaces another unit, where that unit is not core in any course outside the teaching area owning the unit.
• changing the title of a unit.
• changing the year level or semester of a unit
• changing the text of a unit: e.g. syllabus, learning outcomes, assessment task and breakdown.
• changing who owns or teaches a unit or thesis.
• deactivating a unit that is not core in other courses.
• changing optional units within an existing course, major or stream.

 

A glossary of terms used in these criteria can be found at http://handbook.curtin.edu.au/definitions.html