New Course Structures: The UWA Future Framework

Practical aspects of working party operations:

• To facilitate meeting arrangements and expedite progress, the groups need to be small at this stage.
• They draw their membership in different ways from various faculties and other parts of the university. Some members are being added as the work proceeds.
• The working parties have opened direct channels of communication with a range of groups and individuals at faculty level.
• Working parties are advisory to the Implementation Committee, which will bring key issues to Academic Council, Senate and other decision-making bodies.

Working party reports now available

At its 7 October 2009 meeting the Academic Council approved reports from three of the working parties that the Future Framework Implementation Committee had commissioned.

These reports

• Communication Skills
• Embedding Research
• Postgraduate (Cycle 2) Course Development

are now available to guide academic staff in developing proposals for majors within the new course structures and planning Cycle 2 coursework.

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The published reports incorporate amendments adopted by Academic Council on the advice of the Board of Coursework Studies, after input from the Implementation Committee and the Interim Boards of Studies.

Particularly important for undergraduate course development purposes are the reports from the Communication Skills and Embedding Research working parties. Although unit-level details are not necessary for the draft outline submissions of proposals (Phase 1 - due 30 November), planning at this stage still needs to bear in mind the requirement to develop communication skills and research skills for each major sequence.

The report on Cycle 2 postgraduate coursework will be of practical help to disciplines such Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Podiatry, Engineering and Architecture. It identifies a range of issues for professional qualifications at the master or doctoral level, for example, ME, MArch, MD, JD. The Working Party that produced this report has also pursued recommendations on postgraduate coursework previously endorsed by Academic Council: it consulted with faculty representatives to identify and check all current practices that are not aligned with those recommendations, and then provided to Deans detailed information on the audit results.

Academic Council asked for some matters in another working party report - on Honours (including B.Phil Hons) - to be given further consideration by the B.Phil Board of Studies, but this report is also being made available now. It will be an essential source of information for academic staff when attention turns to new Honours courses. The call for Honours proposals will be issued at the beginning of December, immediately after the closing date for Phase 1 submissions.