Teamwork takes curriculum change process to the Web

By Barbara Black

The Web-Based Curriculum ought to make a lot of working lives a little easier. It was created to automate the current curriculum process, which has relied heavily on a manual system that generated a lot of paper.

Francie Beresford, in the Office of the Provost, explained. “The curriculum process involves many levels of committee responsibility, and can take several months to see the finished product through to completion. That can be daunting.

“It has been difficult to track dossiers, or to know which version of a dossier is the correct one. Dossiers were often presented in many different styles, some of which were difficult to follow.”

To solve these problems, the Office of the Provost, in association with Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS), has designed a process that uses the Web. The program, which standardizes and centralizes the curriculum changes process, will be used whenever curriculum changes take place.

Julie Cadham, who was seconded to the project from IITS, said the project proposal was approved in June 2002. Feedback on the first prototype in the fall of 2002 led to Beta testing in February 2002, and the live version was completed by January 2004.

As programmer of this massive project, Etan Lightstone, System Administrator/Web Applications Programmer, IITS, envisioned a web environment that embodied Beresford’s and Cadham’s idea of standardizing documents, as opposed to simply automating the curriculum process. “The greatest challenge was finding a balance between user features, interface simplicity and ensuring that generated documents followed a standard format,” he said.

“We also wanted a system that was straightforward and user-friendly, that could create dossiers that were uniform university-wide,” Beresford said. “An electronic system will speed up the process by the very fact that everyone will be working from the same platform.”

“We are currently doing a limited implementation of the software,” Cadham explained. “Those departments who have new curriculum as of January 2004 have been using the live system. We are also providing training for users on the SGW and Loyola Campuses.”

All users need is Internet Explorer plus a small Java plug-in. “The program is modeled after the manual system. This means that the process is unchanged. In other words, curriculum changes still originate in the departments where a curriculum dossier is created. Once the dossier is completed, it is sent to the faculty for review.”

The introductory training course of two and a half hours should provide the user with enough information to begin using the system. Help is readily available in the form of a user guide and online assistance.

Beresford provided expertise in the curriculum process, edited the user guide, and demonstrated the program for feedback. Cadham co-ordinated the project, wrote the user documentation, and designed and undertook the training of users. Etan Lightstone wrote the program.

Beresford said, “My first priority was the user, who had to like it in order to want to use it. It was a pleasure to be part of a team that worked so well together. People provided us with great feedback, and their suggestions helped us create something we hope will make working on the curriculum more effective and satisfying.”

User feedback was relayed to Lightstone every few weeks, after training sessions took place. “With this valuable information I modified the program to suit common needs that users expressed,” said Lightstone.

“The experience has been rewarding, because I was given the opportunity to design a project and to see that project take shape. Teamwork was an essential part of the process — each of us has contributed to the project equally,” said Cadham.

If you’re looking for this program, go to the home page of the Office of the Provost, look for Curriculum Tracking, and then Provotrack.