By Tony Fitzpatrick
March 30, 2001
Unlike their contemporaries across the country, newly admitted freshmen in Arts & Sciences won't just be selecting first-semester courses from a thick catalog. Instead, they will be using the Web to plan a sequenced course of study designed to achieve curricular coherence across all four years of their undergraduate experience, thanks to innovative curriculum-planning software developed by University information systems specialists.
The software, called simply "the planner," allows Arts & Sciences undergraduate students and their advisers to plan a course of study reaching across all four years. The interactive platform, which uses standard Web browsers, is designed to facilitate and track individual student curricular planning so that each can work out an integrated academic experience. In the past, students faced a miscellany of apparently unrelated choices each semester, whereas the computer application will now encourage them to discover, with their advisers' help, how a range of courses can satisfy their individual educational goals. The planner simplifies the intricacies and complexities of the new Arts & Sciences curriculum by presenting numerous appropriate courses and clusters of courses in "real time."
The new curriculum offers Arts & Sciences students approximately 250 clusters of courses within and, frequently, across disciplinary areas. The planner contains information about course options within clusters, frequency of course offerings and current course listings, including instructor, time and place of class meetings and credit hours.
Under design since October 1999, the planner took more than a year to construct and involved collaboration of 10 information systems specialists. A technical implementation committee involved Arts & Sciences faculty, administrators and systems specialists in every step of the planner's development.
The class of 2005 will be the first group of students to use the planner when they register with their advisers for classes this summer.
"The committee thought that the success of the new curriculum would depend on a tool to assist students and their advisers in planning how to meet the new degree requirements," said Jim Johnson, assistant director of information systems. "The new requirements are fairly demanding, but they're very flexible, and in some cases you can use a certain cluster in more than one way, but in other cases you can't. The planner allows students and advisers to sort the paths out and make multiple plans, and then choose the best one for the individual student.
"The point of the process is to let students choose their degree path in the most interesting manner. And they will be able to modify their plans at any point along the way."
By junior year, students must have a plan for graduation. Besides enabling students to probe hundreds of courses and clusters, the planner will also track the students' progress toward graduation.
"With a click and a glance you know what you've done and have to do," Johnson said. "We're confident that the students are going to find that the process is fun and a great way to explore a meaningful Arts & Sciences education."
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