ROBINSON
COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
OFFERING OF EXPERIMENTAL COURSES
Background
The Graduate and Undergraduate Program Councils occasionally receive a departmentally-initiated
proposal for a new course for which adequate specification of course objectives,
content, or methodology prior to actually offering the course is difficult.
Historically, this situation has resulted in Council and faculty approval of
some courses subject to a review of the course within a year or two. If the
Council, based upon the review, believed that such a course should not be offered
again, a faculty motion to delete the course from the catalogs would need to
be passed. Because of this rather cumbersome and imprecise procedure, Councils
have concluded that an explicit statement of policy with procedures is necessary
to allow preliminary offerings of such courses on an experimental basis. Thus,
the purpose of this Experimental Course Policy is to permit the development
and offering of an innovative course without risking permanent approval of a
potentially undesirable course, or rejecting a potentially desirable course
whose content or methodology cannot be properly specified without testing them
in a classroom setting.
Policy
An academic unit may submit to the appropriate Program Council, under the same
procedures employed for regular course proposals, a proposal for an experimental
course. The Program Council may approve or reject the experimental course proposal.
In addition, the Program Council may choose to approve as an experimental course
a regular course proposal submitted by an academic unit. Any courses approved
by the Program Council as experimental courses will not require approval by
the College faculty. However, the Program Councils will notify the College faculty
of experimental course approvals at College faculty meetings.
A course approval by a Program Council as an experimental course will be approved for a maximum of two offerings. The first offering must occur within three quarters (excluding Summer) of Program Council approval and a second offering must occur within four quarters (excluding Summer) of the first offering. The Program Council may specify conditions that must be met before a second offering is permitted. After a maximum of two offerings, the course may be submitted by the academic unit through the regular course proposal process for consideration by the appropriate Program Council and the faculty of the College as a permanent offering in the College curriculum. A course may not be submitted and approved as an experimental course a second time.
Procedures
Course proposal materials to be submitted. Proposals for experimental
courses are to be submitted to the appropriate Program Council by the same dates
as all other course proposals. The course proposal forms and supporting documents
submitted to a Program Council for a proposed experimental course are to be
the same as for a regular course. Accordingly, course number, title and catalog
description as well as all other information requested as part of the regular
course proposal process should be completed.
Course number. Any course proposal which is approved by a Program Council
as an experimental course will have the suffix "E" after the course
number.
Inclusion of experimental courses in quarterly schedule of classes and catalogs. After Program Council approval of an experimental course, the course may be offered in the first quarter for which publication in the quarterly schedule of classes can be accomplished. An academic unit offering an experimental course is responsible for promulgating information concerning the course, efforts which should be coordinated with the College's Office of Academic Assistance. Experimental course descriptions will not be included in the College's undergraduate or graduate catalogs.
(Approved at RCB Faculty meeting on 1/30/85)