Course Web Guidelines

Adopted Fall 2006

Every faculty member who teaches a computer science course (with the exception of service courses) is required to use the Department's Moodle course web system to facilitate the administration of the course. The content of the course web is to provide a medium to disseminate and collect course materials, such as lecture notes and assignments, as well as, maintain a record (outline) of course content, student work, and course assessment. This record is useful and necessary for internal review and assessment as well as external accreditation purposes for CAC/ABET.

In order to facilitate the usefulness of the course web material for review and accreditation purposes, each course must have the following information posted:

Course Information

This should include a syllabus with the following information:

• Instructor's name, office hours, and location of office
• Course name, number, and meeting times
• Number of credit hours
• Course description
• Learning outcomes and relationship to program goals. This could be linked to an external resource.
• Texts and other required readings
• Required software
• Expected types of assessment activities (presentations, papers, projects, exams, etc.)
• System for evaluation and grading
• Class policies and expectations (academic integrity, attendance policies, classroom behavior guidelines, email policies, extra credit, disability services, etc.)

Weekly/Unit Material

Regardless of whether a weekly or unit format is used each section should contain a summary of the topics covered, links to posted lecture notes and/or slides, studio and homework exercises, etc. The purpose of displaying the topics covered information is to allow someone to gain a basic understanding of the content of the course without having to investigate lecture notes or slides.

Representative Work

Representative low, medium, and high example student work must be supplied along with the corresponding feedback. Other representative works items could include evidence of student writing and presentations, team discussions, etc., if used. The presentation of the representative work should have the corresponding assignment/quiz/exam/etc. description and due date visible or easily accessible.

Course Assessment

Any material related to assessing the course should be included and accessible via the main course page. This should include links to the following items:

• Faculty and committee assessments
• Student evaluations and surveys
• Final grade worksheet

Format

The format of the course content is up to the individual faculty member, but needs to be internally consistent. The course should be appropriately formatted to aid in the overall understanding of all material presented in the course. This should include ample use of white space and indentation to signify appropriate grouping of material. For example, indenting all material related to a course item that is displayed on the main course page, such as additional handouts/solutions/etc.

Example Courses

Courses with examples of various approaches to displaying the necessary information are CS1301, CS1302, CS3212, and CS4220 from Spring 2006.