Given the critical role a syllabus can play in defining and shaping a course, it's not surprising that SACS wants us to maintain the syllabi for all courses taught at the university in a readily accessible data base and that those syllabi will be subject to review during our reaffirmation. SACS reviewers may examine syllabi while they are checking faculty rosters and reviewing faculty members' credentials for teaching particular courses, or they may look at syllabi when they are reviewing program assessment plans to see how particular courses fit into the overall student learning outcomes of that program.

Thank you to everyone who submitted fall syllabi by the Aug. 31, 2007 due date. More than 2,200 syllabi were submitted by the deadline. If yours were not among them, they're still needed. Please upload them now in the Digital Measure system at: http://access.nku.edu/sacs/tools_login.html

 
Although the university-wide collection of syllabi in a single database is a new practice established in 2006, many departments previously collected and maintained libraries of syllabi in their departmental offices. There is also a long-standing NKU requirement that students in all courses be given a course syllabus within the first week of classes each term. And, The NKU Faculty Handbook further specifies that course syllabi should include "course objectives, plan of study, and means of student performance evaluation." (Section IV-B-1-d-i; page 16)

Although the current terminology may be somewhat different than what was been used in the past, student learning outcomes are expected to be an integral part of all NKU syllabi. You may consult Student Learning Outcomes on the Office of Curriculum, Accreditation & Assessment Web site for further discussion and explanation of student learning outcomes and how they can be incorporated in a course syllabus and/or program assessment plan.

The syllabus collection method pilot tested during 2006-07 that required departments to compile their syllabi on CDs proved so cumbersome and time-consuming that it was scrapped and replaced with an online collection and archiving method. Syllabi will no longer be collected on CDs.

The new method of gathering syllabi lets faculty members upload their syllabi with a few clicks of their mouse buttons and automatically sorts, stores, and catalogs each syllabus for easy access and recall. The on-campus database in which the syllabi are stored is cross-linked to both WEAVEonline and Digital Measures Activity Insight so the syllabi can be reviewed in relation to the program-specific data stored in WEAVEonline or in relation to the faculty-specific data stored in Digital Measures.

Digital Measures software is the primary interface for uploading syllabi. Each academic term when faculty enter their teaching schedules for that term faculty members can alsol upload their syllabi.

Due dates for uploading course syllabi Given the long-standing policy that syllabi must be distributed during the first week of class each term, syllabi should be uploaded to the Digital Measures system by the end of the second week of the term. Here is a partial, but not exhaustive, list of syllabi submission due dates. Fall semester 2007 August 31, 2007 Spring semester 2008 February 1, 2008 All summer sessions 2008 July 15, 2008 Fall semester 2008 September 1, 2008