Online Program Development Project

The Online Program Development Project aims to deliver a system that supports the business processes surrounding program planning, development, approval and review. Initiation of the project is a result of the Phillips KPA Project Streamline Report on the Program Approval Process in which it was recommended that the university:

1. Investigate electronic methods for tracking and storing program profile submissions between academic elements and:
2. Reconsider the resources required to update and maintain the Program Catalogue

The Project will trial a new online program management system for new programs commencing in 2009. All other program submissions will be completed using the existing templates, ie Major Change, Special Purpose Submissions. To kick off the trial, a workshop is being conducted in March 2008 for program planning development teams designing programs for introduction in 2009.

Online Program Management System

The Online Program Management System will provide five program related templates (the Program Concept Proposal, Initial Program Proposal, FLAS resources form, Full Program Proposal and Program Withdrawal form). The web based templates can be completed online and submitted online. When a proposal has been submitted online, an email and worklist item will be sent to a nominated staff account for approval. Once an approval decision has been recorded online, the proposal will be moved to the next approval level or recycled for further consideration and development. Approval decisions will be communicated via email to nominated staff. The information contained in the Initial Program Proposal, to generate a new program entry, and the Full Program Proposal, to generate a full program entry, will be made available to the Program Catalogue database once final approval has been recorded in the system. Program Catalogue information will be reviewed prior to publishing to the web.

Key Outcomes

1. To deliver an online system that supports the program development and review process and the business processes surrounding the initiation, development, approval, publication and quality assurance of program information while promoting efficiency, effectiveness and good communication.
2. Publish program information to the Program Catalogue automatically on a program’s approval at appropriate stages in the process.

Key Benefits

1. Reduced timeframes in publishing program information to the Program Catalogue
2. Transparent process whereby stakeholders can track the progress of program approvals
3. Increased opportunities for collaboration as staff can enquire on proposals being developed by other schools
4. Facilitate knowledge management by enabling comments to be stored against a proposal that can be viewed by a planning team.
5. Easily identify programs that are impacted by course changes as courses will be mapped to a program in a structured format.
6. Workflow process to inform relevant staff of action to be taken as decisions are made.
7. An archive of changes made to programs over time, accessible to all stakeholders

Project Sponsor:

Sue Spence, Pro Vice Chancellor (Learning & Student Outcomes)

Project Manager:

Karen van Haeringen (Business Process), Allison Vial, (System Development), Business Systems Services