Over the course of the last several quarters, the department's system staff has been designing and implementing a new Syllabus Database tool. This tool provides facilities to enable faculty to propose revisions to particular courses. When such a revision is proposed, the tool sends an email message to the chair of the Curriculum Committee notifying him or her of the proposed change so that a preliminary discussion on the proposed change can be scheduled during a regular meeting of the committee. Perhaps more important, it ensures that faculty preparing proposed revised syllabus for a course do address all the questions that a syllabus is required to address, in particular a proper evaluation, in terms of the standard metric we use, of the contribution the course makes toward various program outcomes and EC 2000 Criterion 3 outcomes. The tool also keeps track of the precise status of each proposed change (discussed in committee, approved by committee, approved by CSE faculty, approved by the College Committee on Academic Affairs, etc.).
Faculty have begun using the tool and the tools seems to hold considerable promise. For example, if in the future we were to decide to request instructors to evaluate each section of a course they teach with respect to its contribution toward various outcomes and compare the results against the values listed in the syllabus, then the tool can be easily extended to take care of such things as sending timely reminders to instructors to do this, to record their responses, and to alert course coordinators of any large discrepancies that warrant a closer look. We expect the tool to provide considerable help in keeping track of changes in the curriculum, and to ensure that proper processes are followed.