Curriculum Management FAQ

The Curriculum Management service is supported by both the Syllabus Team and ISS. Curriculum issues are dealt with by the Syllabus Team and ISS are responsible for Technical issues.

• Akari Document site is inaccessible or unavailable
• Account Issue
• Akari Document site is perfomring very poorly

All technical issues with the service should be logged as normal through the Service Desk. Use the following categories when logging a ticket with the Service Desk. However, please have a look at the FAQ first as the answer is likely to be there! 

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The Curriculum Management service is supported by both the Syllabus Team in Acadmeic Administration and ISS. Curriculum & Syllabus issues, requests and queries are dealt with by the Syllabus Team and ISS are responsible for Technical issues.

 Syllabus Team offer an online form as an alternative issue logging mechanism outside of the Service Desk. 

• Click Akari Document to access the service. Accounts are automatically provisioned on the site, use your Campus Account credentials to login. 

Akari Document is available on campus and off campus from a Wired and Wireless connection. Please check that you can access other websites. Log a ServiceDesk ticket if Akari Document is the only website that you can't access. Before logging a ticket - Click the link https://idp.nuigalway.ie/idp/profile/Status . If this link returns an ok message on the screen please include this infomration when logging a ticket with the ServiceDesk.

To make changes to existing course information you need to create a new version of the module or the course instance on Akari. 

Once you make the changes you submit them for approval.

There are 3 steps to be followed by disciplines/schools/college in updating curricular information

1.  Editor/Owner: Make the changes to the module and when you are happy with them submit for approval.  The new version of the module can be saved in draft a number of times before it is submitted for approval
2. Coordinator: Once the Editor/owner submits the changes for approval the module goes to a coordinator.  This role is one of review/proof reading the module.  The coordinator has read only status and cannot make changes.  If (s)he is not happy with the changes (s)he can  revert the module to draft.  (s)he will get the opportunity to give some feedback and once saved the module will go back to the Owner editor for correction.  If the coordinator is happy with the changes then they can submit to the next level for approval.*
3. Approver: this is the final approval stage.  The approver cannot make changes to the module if they are not happy but can revert it back to draft.  If they are happy then the changes will be submitted for dispatch to Quercus.

*There are just 2 steps involved in approving courses.  The coordinator step is skipped

4. A fourth step is completed once the module has received final approval in the College and has been approved on Akari

Once the College approve the changes to module/course the changes will be sent over to Quercus by the syllabus team.  The modules/courses will have a status of awaiting processing until that final transfer takes place.

The deadlines on Akari are in line with the Academic deadline for approving courses at Standing Committee. 

The deadlines must be adhered to in order to  successfully transfer of all the Curriculum Manager data to Quercus in advacne of the new Acadmic Year. All data entered into Curriculum Manager must be thoroughly checked to ensure validity and accuracy. 

Modules are added to the year of study, therefore in Aakri Document, add modules to the relevant Course instance.    

Once you submit your module for approval it will move from draft to pending.  You should see a pending tab on your dashboard and once you click in there you will see any modules pending approval. 

NB All changes will remain in this pending tab until the data is successfully sent to Quercus . 

Yes you do. 

Modules behave differently on different programmes.  A module might be core on one and optional on another.  For this reason the module needs to be added to each course individually.

Once added however changes to the module should be adopted globally on all courses on which it appears.  So if delivery is changed from Semester 1 to 2 on the module, that information will be updated wherever the module appears.  

At certain times of the year your approved changes to modules and Courses will be sent to Quercus  for the next Academic year.  The Curriculum Management system usually closes for edits to the next Academic Year at the end of April. 

E.G.  Curriculum Manager closes for edits on 28th April 2017 for the 2017/18 Academic Year. When the system reopens in mid-May, any additions/edits will be for the 2018/19 Academic Year. 

A 1 Level course refers to a programme where there are modules only and no subjects.  A 2 Level course has subjects which contain modules.

E.g. History as a subject with HIXXX1, HIXXX2 and HIXXX3 as the modules contained in that subject. .  On a 2 level programme, marks are returned for each module and an overall mark calculated for the Subject result.  

A course is the top level, usually it is represented by initials only e.g. BA

A Course stream is a version of the programme.  The full time version of the programme might be BB1 and the part time Programme might be BB2.  They have different codes on the system because they differ in structure and usually in credit weightings.

 A course instance is a year of the programme.  So a Stream may have 4 instances or 4 years of study.  In the current example the course instances for the full time programme would be as follows

• 1BB1, Year1 of the programme
• 2BB1, Year 2 of the programme
• 3BB1, Year 3 of the programme
• 4BB1 Year 4 of the programme

In a similar way the instances for the part time version would be 1BB2, 2BB2, 3BB2 and 4BB2.  If a programme is a diploma then it would have just 2 instances because there are just 2 years of study.    The number of instances are added when you create the stream.

All written exams are timetabled using Quercus and thus information relating to them must be entered correctly in Curriculm Manager.  

You need to fill in the correct assessment and semester details in the Assessment tab.  If the semester is incorrect then the module will not appear on the correct timetable.  Similarly if the assessment type is incorrect (i.e. departmental or continuous) the module will not appear on the exam timetable.  Please ensure you choose Written as the Assessment Category and Paper 1 written (or paper 2 written etc.) as the Assessment type. 

Bonding occurs in cases where there are written papers involved which are timetabled by the Examinations Office, when two or more assessments have to be examined at the same time. This usually means an examination by written paper, computer-based lab assignment, or audio-visual lab assignment.  It also has implications for the management of examination papers and scripts.

There are three types of different assessment bonds:

• Shared Material – Some material in module A is the same as that in module B.  This is where some questions on written paper A are also used on written paper B.  The bonded modules will be in different course instances, and/or mutually exclusive options in the same course instance.  There will be two physical papers to be uploaded.
• Common Paper – two or more modules are examined using the same physical paper i.e. one paper is handed out to students. A given student can only ever take one of a set of modules bonded in this way.  One physical paper is uploaded.
• Combined Paper – where two or more distinct modules are represented as different sections on the one physical paper. That is to say, where paper 1 of module ‘A’ and paper 1 of module ‘B’ are examined separately on the same physical paper. In this scenario, the different modules will not share any content, although they will almost always deal with the same basic subject matter. In other words, you would not expect an Accountancy and a Marketing assessment to be combined in this way, but two or more French assessments could be combined in this way. A very important point about combined papers is that the different modules are usually directed at the same students. One physical paper is uploaded.

Further details on the types of bonds etc. are at http://www.nuigalway.ie/academic-records/new_website/

Requisites are used to control access to a module. This happens at the programme level because the access a student should have to a module may vary depending on the programme on which they are registered. 

 There are 3 types of requisites

• A Co Requisite is where if a student selects module X they must also choose module Y
• A Pre Requisite is where if a student wants to take module X they must have completed module Y or module Y and Z in the previous year
• An Exclusion Requisite is where if a student chooses module X they cannot then choose module Y or module Y and Z (whatever they are not permitted to take along with module X)

Up until now requisites were added to courses by the syllabus team, however from 2016 they must be added by the disciplines/schools/colleges using Curriculum Manager

There is a coding convention which needs to be followed for all new subjects, courses and modules.

New Subjects will be coded as follows:  2 alphabetic characters followed by 4 digits. The digits will be made up of the year of study followed by zero and the credits of the subject e.g.

• EN2030: where English is the subject, the year of study is 2 and it carries 30 credits
• EN2025: where English is the subject, the year of study is 2 and it carries 25 credits
• EN2060: where English is the subject, the year of study is 2 and it carries 60 credits
• If the subject were in 3^rd year the codes depending on the credits would be would be EN3030, EN3025 and EN3060.
• If the subject were in 1^st year the codes, depending on the credits, would be would be EN1030, EN1025 and EN1060.

 New Modules will be coded as follows 2 alphabetic characters followed by 4 digits. 

Given the Subject coding which includes credits etc. the numbers up to 99 are used so modules will start from 100.

• E.g.: Archaeology Year 2: AR2100 would be the first module to be coded under the new convention. There are lots of numbers available as this can run from AR2100-AR2999
•  EN1100-EN1999 for first year English modules where EN is English 1 is year of study.
• EN2100-EN2999 for second year English modules
• EN3100  EN3999 for the third year English module.

The 3^rd year abroad codes are a special case and a slightly different convention can be used:

2 alphabetic characters followed by 4 digits. The digits will be made up of the year of study followed by the number 5, followed by the credits of the subject

• Archaeology in 3BA4 would be AR3530
• Psychology in 3BA9 would be PS3560 (the only subject in the course structure)

More information at http://www.nuigalway.ie/academic-records/new_website/

A new course will be coded as follows; 3 alphabetic characters

• E.g. BCS Bachelor of Arts with Children’s Studies
• BEE Bachelor of Engineering (Sports and Exercise)

 These will be derived from the Course Code.  A stream is a version of the programme.  It would be necessary to create a second stream if there was a part time (as well as a full time) version of the programme

• BCS1: might be the stream for the full time version of the programme
• BCS2 might be the stream for the part time version of the programme

 A course instance is a year of the programme stream (or year of study)  

•  1BCS1 would be year 1 of the full time BCS above
• 2BCS1 would be year 2 of the full time programme etc.

 The part time version of this would have instance codes as follows

• 1BCS2: would be year 1
• 2BCS2: would be year 2 etc.

As the Instance codes are always derived from the stream, this will be automatically entered when an instance is created on Akari.*

*Akari is the Curriculum Management Software used by the NUI Galway for all curriculum/syllabus updates from 2015/16 academic year.

More information at http://www.nuigalway.ie/academic_records/akari.html