Group+Module+6

**Module 6**

 * Post a description of your group's content area, the problem or task, and the student population.**

The content area for our group is inside a database (“Curriculum Central”) being introduced to the University of Hawaii system, a database to record and store course outlines. The database is in use at a few campuses in the UH system: UH Hilo, Kapi’olani Community College, Leeward Community College, and UH Maui College. The database is soon to be piloted by the UHM College of Education, Windward Community College, and Kauai Community College.

Our project will focus on how to answer three questions used by Kapi’olani Community College in a course outline, a progression of whole problems. The skills used in answering the questions build in increasing complexity. Basic navigation skills learned previously are assumed. The project will focus on teaching the new skills needed for these three questions on a course outline in the database. The three questions are (1) Program Student Learning Outcomes, (2) Course Competencies, and (3) Course Content. The instructional materials prepared for ETEC 750B will focus on the tasks expected of the course proposer rather than the tasks for course reviewers and tasks for course approvers.

The population being taught are college faculty, tenured and untenured, all with a minimum of a master’s degree in their content area, some with a PhD. No assumption can be made for computer skills, organizational skills, or logic skills that the faculty may or may not have. Previous experience has shown that even faculty who teach computer courses often have difficulty the first few times that they encounter the three questions that we will focus on in the project. Previous experience has shown that some faculty may not have organized their course content around the competencies to be attained by the students. Some faculty may not yet have thought about and connected how their course content may support degree or certificate learning outcomes.

Please click here for a visual analysis of our project.

**Revised version of first attempt at Module 6 (database)**

**Post a description of your group's content area.**

The content area for our group is inside a database (“Curriculum Central”) being introduced to the University of Hawaii system, a database to record and store course outlines. For the purposes of ETEC750B we will use the test version of the database which is located at [] The database is in use at a few campuses in the UH system: UH Hilo, Kapi’olani Community College, Leeward Community College, and UH Maui College. The database is soon to be piloted by the UHM College of Education, Windward Community College, and Kauai Community College.

**Post a description of your group's** **problem or task** Our project will focus on how to answer three types of course outlines used by Kapi’olani Community College, a progression of whole problems. The skills used in answering the questions build in increasing complexity. Basic navigation skills learned previously are assumed. The project will focus on specific sections of outlines to (1) make a course inactive, (2) update a course that exists in skeletal version, or (3) create a new course. The instructional materials prepared for ETEC 750B will focus on the tasks expected of the course proposer rather than the tasks for course reviewers and tasks for course approvers.

**Post a description of your group's target population**. The population being taught are college faculty, tenured and untenured, all with a minimum of a master’s degree in their content area, some with a PhD. No assumption can be made for computer skills, organizational skills, or logic skills that the faculty may or may not have. Previous experience has shown that even faculty who teach computer courses often have difficulty the first few times that they encounter the three questions that we will focus on in the project. Previous experience has shown that some faculty may not have organized their course content around the competencies to be attained by the students. Some faculty may not yet have thought about and connected how their course content may support degree or certificate learning outcomes.

Why there is a need to store course outlines in a database? A current administrative decision is that outlines are to be shared and/or accessible between the ten campuses of the UH system. Currently at many campuses the course outlines (if they exist) are paper documents stored in file cabinets.
 * Q & A from reviewer comments **

Could you tell us the name of that database? Curriculum Central.

From my understanding, your project will be focus on teaching people how to use the skills to manipulate the database or how to answer those three questions? The revised project will focus on the increased complexity from a more simple course deactivation, to a more complex update of a skeletal version of a course, to the most complex – creation of a new course outline.

Does this database works as like Laulima system? No, not at all. Perhaps you are confusing courses with class sections. A course outline in Curriculum Central can be thought of as a master course that all class sections are based on, for example the first semester of French might be FR 101. Students enroll in FR101 taught by professor X on Tuesdays and Thursdays as a specific class section with a CRN number in the Banner registration system. The course outline for freshman mathematics (MATH 100) in Curriculum Central would be the master course that suggests content, course objectives, and grading methods for any and all MATH 100 classes. The individual MATH 100 sections assigned to specific professors are referred to as classes.

Is its purpose to act like a catalog of courses? Eventually, when all courses have been entered into the database, it can be used as a source for the courses section of the College catalog. Further down the line when Curriculum Central includes degree and certificate programs, then it can be used as a source for the programs section of the catalog. Policies, history, faculty/staff listings and other catalog information will continue to be stored separately.

I am confused about what does this database used and why we need to record and store course outline. Broadly, the reason we need to create and archive course outlines in a database is to provide documentation to accreditors. Course outlines are one of the areas of required documentation for the accreditation process. Why do we need to provide documents to accreditation teams? Most broadly, to keep the College “in business”, to continue to be eligible to receive federal funding, and to continue to have valid/recognized degrees and certificates. If any College in the UH system were to lose accreditation then the degrees and certificates from that College would be worthless to the students. An additional use for the database of course outlines? The information stored in the course outlines (both current and archived versions of courses) could be requested by transcript evaluators. Another use for the database of course outlines is to make easily available the information that instructors need so that courses taught by multiple faculty (such as freshman composition or US history) are roughly equivalent for transfer purposes within the UH system.

To help me understand the database more, could you provide me with a brief history of why this database was created and it's purpose once courses are entered. The database was originally created for one of the Community Colleges on O'ahu. Kapi'olani Community College spent several years searching for an off-the-shelf solution to the archiving challenge that would have the features needed to gather in one place the information needed to meet the requirements of the accreditation process. After finding none the College decided to work with other Community Colleges to update and re-purpose an existing database, Curriculum Central. The customization of the database has been a slow process and is still continuing. A visit from the accreditation team is scheduled for fall 2012. The faculty have not yet entered all of the course outlines into the Curriculum Central database that the accreditation team will be looking at. Once each course is entered it goes through an approval process from a discipline, a department, a dean, the Curriculum Committee (both full and sub-committees), the Faculty Senate, the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and the Chancellor. After the approval the course outline goes to an Educational Specialist for entry into the Banner database used by the UH system for registration and transcripts. The course outlines in Curriculum Central are accessible by all faculty, including counselors, at all UH campuses. The course outlines are also accessible by Institutional Research for statistical analysis. The Curriculum Central database will be accessible by the accreditation team. Eventually all extant past, present, and future course outlines will be archived in the Curriculum Central database. Currently some outlines are paper documents stored in file cabinets, some are digital copies in faculty computers, some are digital copies stored in committee archives. Previous outlines, whether paper or digital, may have had as many as 14 versions while going through the approval process in any given year. The multiple versions have sometimes caused confusion. Policy states that each course outline must be updated on a minimum 5 year cycle. Updating is difficult when the outlines have been stored in a variety of places with a variety of versions. Curriculum Central insures that only one approved version exists and only one proposed version exists for each course. Previously approved versions are archived within the database and are therefore accessible to transcript evaluators.