Forms

Course forms

New from 2012 January are PDF versions of the new course, course revision, and course deletion forms. Please download the appropriate form and enjoy it. You require Acrobat Reader version 9 or higher to use these forms.

Note also that there are no instruction sheets for these documents; they are designed to be intuitive and come with tooltips that appear as you hover your mouse over a field. Fields which are required are surrounded with a red border. Apologies to those who have difficulty seeing the colour red; we haven't figured out how to change the colour of the border.

If you have problems with these forms (the ones we know about are listed below), please contact Rick Gee (local 4634 or rgee@okanagan.bc.ca) as quickly as possible. These forms have been tested relatively thoroughly but they undoubtedly contain a few unintentional errors. Note: if you download a form and then need to make another proposal of the same kind, you may wish to download a new form. Errors are being corrected and improvements are being made as necessary. Check the version date on the forms.

• Please note that Firefox (starting with version 19) comes with a built-in PDF viewer. The viewer is not smart enough to handle these documents. Either use the Open with a Different Viewer button and choose Acrobat Reader, or download the document and then view it using Acrobat Reader. In either case, please try to use the latest version of Reader.
• We have received reports that these forms may not work if you are running the UNIX operating system; the version of Acrobat Reader there is not sufficiently advanced. There is a similar problem with Windows XP and older versions of Acrobat Reader; please upgrade both your operating system and Acrobat Reader if you can.
• A known problem (with a workaround): When you copy a bulleted list from a Word document into an EdCo form, the typeface will usually change to the Greek alphabet. If it does not change to the Greek alphabet, then it may change to an invisible font. In either case, it's hard to read. Suggestion: In the original document, change the list to just a series of paragraphs and then copy and paste into the PDF. There is no workaround for this at the present time.
• A known problem (with a workaround): If you are reading an EdCo form in Acrobat Reader and try to send it to another person via File, Send File, you receive an error message. The error message is incorrect; there appears to be no solution to this problem. But there is a workaround: save the edited document and then attach the file to your email message.
• A known problem (with a workaround): When you copy a table from a Word document into an EdCo form, the data in the table is copied but the structure (and properties, including fill colour) of the table is not. For example, if you have a table whose rows contain three cells, the content of the cells will be separated by tabs rather than remaining as cells of a table. The workaround is to convert the table to text within Word; the tab spacing will probably be better. Then copy the text and paste it into the PDF.

Program forms

New on 2012 September 13 - Here are draft forms for programs. These are tested but have not been tested as thoroughly as the course forms. Please report problems to Rick, at the address noted above.

Revise program
New Certificate
New Non-degree (diploma) program
New Degree program
Delete program

Wording

You may be interested in some useful definitions and wording.

Cross-listing

Cross-listed courses have the same course title, calendar description, course content, level (first digit of the course number), and credit value, but department subject codes and course numbers may differ. Cross-listed courses are identified as such in the Okanagan College Calendar.

• Cross-listing proposals must have the approval of all relevant departments, portfolio curriculum review bodies, Education Council standing committees and Education Council.
• Course content, calendar description, format, contact hours, methods of evaluation, and selection and recommended assignment of faculty will reside with the originating department.
• A full calendar description will be provided for the courses in all departments using the cross-listed course. The course description for XXX should conclude “This course is also offered as YYY. Students with credit for YYY cannot take XXX for further credit.”
• Okanagan College will maintain a table of cross-listed courses to ensure:
  • Credit will be granted only once for the cross-listed courses.
  • Students will continue to meet program requirements for the number of courses taken outside the portfolio or outside the area of specialization.
  • A cross-listed course may only be used once to meet the requirements for a Major/Minor/Emphasis/Specialization/Option.
• The costs involved in offering a cross-listed course will be negotiated between the departments.
• Faculty members capable of teaching the cross-listed course need only exist in one department.
• Okanagan College will maintain a record of the consultation and agreement between the cross-listing departments.

Calendar description for a course

Past practice has been to limit the calendar description to 60 words or less. This is not so much a requirement now that the calendar is online. The new course and course revision forms both tell you how many words you have provided in your description but do not limit you if you need a longer description.

The calendar description should be placed on your course outline. A technique some are using to provide additional information about the course is to add a portion to the course outline, immediately following the calendar description and separated from it by a heading (Course content, or Additional description, or Additional information), which provides expanded or additional information about the course. For a computing course, you may wish to provide information about the software being used. For an English course, you may wish to describe a specific approach or emphasis you will be using. For a Topics course, you should provide details of the specific topic(s) being considered.

Policies

If you are developing policies which need to be approved by the Academic Regulations and Policy (ARP) standing committee and then Education Council, the template policy is available here and its cover page is available here. Both are docx files, at least for the moment.

Last updated: 2013 03 27