By Susan Green
On the surface, proposing a new course of instruction is a simple process. You decide what you want to teach, collect the materials, draw on your expertise and then sally forth to share your knowledge and insights with your students.
But, it's not that simple.
New courses need to meet a specific set of criteria before they wend their way through the university's long established curriculum approval process to be sanctioned by the General Education Council (GEC) and the University Curriculum Council (UCC).
"Traditionally this process is done on paper, but we've designed a new Web-based course approval process that eliminates the paper system to make it easier and quicker," says Bill Owens, professor of classics and chair of the GEC.
| General education introduces all students to a shared academic experience and seeks to equip them with fundamental intellectual skills such as writing, speaking, and reasoning; to introduce them to a range of disciplines and thereby to the richness of interdisciplinary learning; to expose them to new perspectives that open up new worlds of understanding and challenge their own thinking and assumptions; and to afford them the opportunity to integrate what they have learned for the purpose of scholarly discovery and/or creative activity. The range and diversity of general education, then, complements the focused, more specialized learning that students acquire in their majors and ensures that all students have a common core of skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking. |
Owens collaborated with Marvin Fletcher, chair of the Individual Course Committee and Margret Appel, chair of the UCC, to design the proposal form and process. Li Chen and Dave Hannum, Web analyst/programmers in the computer services center, did the programming. University College is supplying Web support through Tanya Barnet, who designed the portal page and the help page. And computer network services' help desk is providing support for the entire system.
"It's still a rigorous process," says Owens. "But faculty will have a clearer sense they are making a contribution to the general education curriculum since the Web-based process allows you to track the progress of your proposal."
Ann Kovalchick, director of the Center for Innovation in Technology for Learning, created a questionnaire for faculty to complete once a course proposal submission is finished. The questions are specific to general education and ask faculty about the needs and challenges inherent in teaching a broad range of subjects.
For an overview of the general education program and the course approval process please visit www.ohio.edu/gened.
Susan Green is a writer with University Communications and Marketing.
