Registrar Course Catalog Development

Using the Course Catalog Editing Tool

• Choose the year by clicking on the correct link under “Years” located beneath the large Course Catalog Editing title.
• Choose the subject you are planning to edit by clicking the name of the department.

Creating a course

• Click “Add” on the top of the page just above the large department title (i.e. SPAN). Choose “Course”.
• First add the number and “Short Title” (if you do not yet have a number you can leave this blank). Remember that a short title can only be 24 characters long (this is the number of characters allowed by the field.) You should leave the “Section” blank.
• Then select a “Status This Year”. When creating a new course the status will be “New”. This includes courses that were dropped from the catalog but are being re-added. (See discussion of status codes under “editing a course”.)
• Add a “Long Title”. This can be as long as the instructor wishes and will feed to the online scheduler and printed catalog. Note that only the Short Title will appear on student’s schedule/transcript.
• Add the “Last Name” of all instructors and choose a “Semester” (Fall, Spring, or Both) and add in any “Status” remarks such as “Professor” “Visiting Lecturer” etc. (Please only include the last name and a first initial if needed under last name.) Use the “Add another instructor” button to create new lines.
• Fill in the course description. If you are ‘cutting and pasting’ from word it should now be okay without further steps.  There is no specific word count limit to the description. At the bottom of the description should be a separated sentence that includes (in order): Requisite: explanation (if any), class year limit (if any), limit (if any), Semester, Instructor(s).

For example:
Requisite: BIOL 100 or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 20 students. Fall Semester. Prof. Smith.
OR
Limited to 25 students. Fall semester: Professor Smith. Spring semester: Professor Brown.

• Fill out the information below the description (if applicable). If there is a limit on the course you must fill out the “how to handle over-enrollment:” box.  This information feeds to the scheduler so there is no need to also add it to the description.  If the course is ‘open to first years with permission.’ This does not make the course permission pending and the checkbox should remain unchecked. If you check a box please add information to the field.  Do not check ‘limited enrollment’ without supplying a limit or ‘class level limit’ without describing which classes are excluded or included. This data is used by the Registrar’s office to build the courses and confusing information can lead to errors.
• Make sure to fill out the information to the right as well. If the course is only offered once you should tick BOTH boxes. Only ticking ‘offered only once’ will not make the course feed to the online scheduler. Add the semester and any keywords.
• Finally you should move the workflow to department chair and let your chair know the course is ready for approval. Only new courses or those with major revisions will need to be approved by the chair. Otherwise they will flow automatically to “Publications”. Once the chair approves a course and saves out, it may take several minutes for the course to flow to committees. If worried, I’d suggest checking back after an hour.
• It can be good practice to view the course in non-editing mode (just click on the title) to make sure that your editing is correct. (It can look correct in editing mode but look different in the display.)

Creating a Crosslisting

• Click “Add” on the top of the page just above the large department title (i.e. SPAN). Choose “Course Crosslisting”.
• If creating a cross-listing, fill in the number of the course (leave “section” “Workday ID” and “Old Number” blank) then click in the box marked “Refers To:” to find the correct corresponding course by typing the first part of the name (e.g. ENGL-111) and you should see a drop down menu underneath the box. Choose the correct course by clicking on it. If you are not getting a drop down you have most likely forgotten to use the “-“.
• Add a subcategory if your department uses them. (Many do not.)
• Change the “Workflow State” to “Dept. Chair” and alert the Chair that the course is ready to be approved.

Deleting or Editing a Course

• If a course is no longer going to be taught then the best thing to do is delete the course from the current year’s catalog. The information will be retained in previous years so it can be retrieved if necessary. If a course will be dropped but may come back you will need to untick the box that says “show in printed catalog”. This will allow you to retain the course in the editing tool but it will not feed to the curriculum page of your departmental website or be added to the current printed catalog.
• If you need to make changes to a course, click on “edit” on the right hand side of the course list page in the catalog editing tool. Once you’ve opened the course to editing you can follow the steps above for creating a course.
• If editing is not available you can send an email to either cmoulton@amherst.edu or nkratner@amherst.edu.

Minor Revision vs. Major revision

• A major revision is something that substantively changes the course. Examples include, but are not limited to, decreasing the limit on the course, changing the scope of the course, and completely restructuring the course.
• A minor revision can be something like changing the instructor, adjusting the books that will be read, fixing sentence structure in the description, increasing the limit, or any other change that does not substantially change the course.
• If in doubt, you can ask Nancy Ratner or Chris Moulton.

Editing the book list and costs

• Make sure you're in the course catalog editing tool.
• Click on the name of the course you'd like to update.
• On the top of the page in the purple ribbon, click on "Edit bookist and course cost".
• Fill in the information, making sure the semester is correct for all books or they will not display in the course scheduler.
• Once finished, click the "Book List is Complete" checkbox.
• Until the box is clicked students will see a message on the book list which states: This is preliminary information about books for this course. Please contact your instructor or the Academic Coordinator for the department, before attempting to purchase these books.
• Please remind faculty that it is important that they include this information due to federal regulations.