About us

Background

In September 2005 as part of Project Streamline, Phillips KPA reviewed the University’s program approval process in order to

• strengthen links between strategic planning and program review and development;
• achieve stronger ownership of program review and development at the level of senior academic management;
• encourage major program review and development projects to use an effective project management methodology; and
• provide for a variety of approaches to program review and development depending on scale, complexity and impact of the project.

Policies and processes were changed to create the new program planning, development and approval process and these changes were implemented as part of the University’s operational planning process in May, 2006. A number of difficulties arose with the introduction of the new program profile plan and the demise of the new program concept proposal as part of the University’s operational planning processes.

In April 2007 the Program Planning, Development and Approval policy was revised to reintroduce the Program Concept Proposal. For program planning, three templates are required: the Program Profile Plan, the Program Concept Proposal and the Initial Program Proposal. In addition, the Request for FLAS Resources is optional for both new and existing programs. In parallel to the introduction of a revised program development process, work has been proceeding on revisions to the University’s program review processes.

As the University moves to greater clarity in its program planning, development, approval and review process, it is recognised that the academic community seeks to improve the implementation of this process by

• making the planning and approval processes faster, more effective and responsive to market opportunities;
• reducing the bureaucracy around program approval by making it clear, simple and easy to understand;
• reducing the number of face to face meetings for programs committee;
• placing the emphasis on good curriculum design and development;
• facilitating better adherence to approval timelines;
• facilitating the update of program catalogue entries and other program promotional materials in a timely and market responsive manner.

Online Program Management System Features

The online program management system has been designed to provide the following features and benefits:

• reduced data entry in proposals by:
• pre-populating sections of a proposal based on responses in early sections;
• retrieving and inserting relevant sections from preceding proposals into related sections in a subsequent proposal.
• trigger workflow and notification emails on the submission and approval of proposals;
• store comments from meetings so that discussion points and outcomes are recorded centrally against the proposal;
• provide enquiry features to track the progress of a proposal through the approval process;
• publish program information to the program catalogue on approval;
• send an electronic copy of proposal documentation to corporate archives and records management system on approval;
• provide version control for proposals;
• provide an ability to map courses to programs in a structured format.

Benefits

• a single authoritative source of a program submission for the purpose of revision and review;
• a log of past changes and the rationale for those to guide future curriculum development;
• ability to easily identify which programs are impacted by course changes as courses will be able to be mapped to programs in a structured format;
• increase the opportunities for collaboration as staff can enquire on proposals being developed by other schools and groups;
• facilitate knowledge management and curriculum development by allowing comments to be stored online against a proposal that can be viewed by a curriculum planning team;
• more efficient communication as decisions will be communicated immediately upon approving the proposal in the system.
• fewer resubmissions to committees as a result of recording decisions and comments against a proposal at each approval stage
• improved tracking and reporting of program approvals
• reduced timeframes in publishing program information to the web