General Curriculum Committee Questions About New Course Proposals

This document is intended to help one who plans to propose a new course. The careful reader can save all parties time and frustration down the road by preparing to address concerns commonly raised by curriculum committee members.

Therefore, if you are proposing a new course and want relatively smooth sailing in the Curriculum Committee, you should carefully consider and prepare written answers to the following questions as early as possible in the process. These answers should be submitted for informal consideration and feedback from the Curriculum Committee somewhat before the formal course request is made.

After review of the answers to these general questions, the Curriculum Committee may ask for more specific information before considering whether to "bless" the proposal in principle. Such a blessing is not intended to be an official action of the Curriculum Committee, but a statement that the Committee believes that a subsequent formal new course request is appropriate for consideration under normal procedures. There are no guarantees, of course, that the course request will be approved just because the Curriculum Committee has agreed that the proposal makes sense at this level. It would be accurate to say that this document is geared more toward preparing the course proposer and making sure that the proposal will be not sent back several times due to technicalities before coming up for serious discussion. On the other hand, in the absence of satisfactory answers to these questions at the beginning of the process, it is likely that a formal new course request will face significant questions regarding most of its aspects.

1. What is the nature of the proposed course?
1. What is the overall nature of the course briefly stated?
2. What is the scope of the course in terms of expected changes to the current CSE curriculum?
3. What existing CSE courses or courses are related to the proposed course by similarity, prerequisites, etc.?
4. What other departments will be concerned with the proposed course and how?
2. What problems does the proposed course solve and/or create?
1. Why is there a need for this course?
2. What could not be accomplished if this course were not created?
3. Who is demanding the course or the product of the course?
4. Who is the intended/expected audience for the course?
5. How many students would be involved in the course?
6. How is the course related to national movements or trends?
7. How is the course related to the GRE advanced test in CS?
3. What is the proposed course's detailed structure?
1. What draft sample course descriptions (objectives, prerequisites, syllabi, texts, grading schemes, ...) are available?
2. What draft sample homework problems, lab assignments, and exam questions are available?
3. What is the history and previous experience with this course (pilot sections, other universities, ...)?
4. What resources are needed to implement and conduct the course?
1. What faculty are available/will be required to teach the course?
2. What computer resources (hardware, software, staff time, etc.) will be required to implement this course? What's the initial, one-time cost and what is the yearly maintenance, upgrade, replacement cost?
3. What other materials or resources will be required to implement this course?
4. What kind of grading or lab assistant support will this course need?
5. How will the course be implemented?
1. If applicable, how will the course's curriculum be phased in?
2. What are the "fall-back" positions if the changes cannot be completed as originally planned?
6. How will "success" of the course be gauged?
1. What are the criteria to be evaluated?
2. What provisions are there to conduct the evaluation?