Administration

All courses must be organisationally placed in a department to clarify formal responsibilities. The same is true for most programmes, but they can also be placed directly under a faculty. It is important to agree on the responsibilities involved in hosting a course and a programme, for example in terms of monitoring quality, or holding course or programme committee meetings.

At the same time, it is important that the lecturers from other departments also feel ownership of the course/programme. The department should be seen first and foremost as an administrative host and should avoid dominating cooperation and content with its subject perspective.

In the case of cooperation across departmental/faculty lines, it is important that all parties involved participate in all phases of the course (development, planning, implementation, follow-up) and are represented on the programme committee, for example.

There are several ways of reasoning when discussing which department/faculty should host the programme. It may be the department that has sufficient administrative resources to manage an additional course/programme, the department that took the initiative for the course/programme, or the one whose current students can be expected to be most interested in taking the course/programme when it is offered. For programmes, it may be appropriate for the programme manager/coordinator to be employed by the host department, but this is not essential.

When agreeing which department will host the programme or course, it is important to bear in mind that the funding for delivering a course or programme is based on the content, not on which department is hosting it. It is therefore perfectly possible for a host department in the Faculty of Science and Technology to have a course classified as Humanities, Theology, Law, Social Sciences (HSJT) and vice versa. The course classification is determined by Uppsala University’s course classification group.

Potential responsibilities of the host department/faculty:

• Formally approve on and, when necessary, revise the course/programme syllabus and any study plans
• Create a course/programme instance when the course/programme will be delivered
• Coordinate the staffing of the course/programme and the other contributions of the participating departments
• Take care of other course administration relating to assessment, timetabling, registration of grades in student registry, booking of rooms, etc.
• Coordinate educational evaluations and the actions taken in response
• Coordinate the ongoing quality assurance procedures for the course/programme, e.g. convene collegial meetings
• Ensure that development work is done when needed
• Market the programme, if appropriate

Depending on which department and faculty has formal responsibility for a course or programme, procedures for educational evaluations will differ. It may be worth trying to develop your own, more customised model, but the important thing is to have a plan that ensures that all departments and divisions involved are engaged in the evaluation process. Similarly, everyone needs to be involved in the actions resulting from the evaluation.

Uppsala University has a number of main and minor fields of study established by the Vice-Chancellor for Bachelor’s and/or Master’s (60 or 120 credits) degrees, corresponding to first and second cycle courses respectively. Any main field of study for a Bachelor’s degree can be a minor field of study for the same degree, but a minor field of study cannot be a main field of study.

When a new course is created, the main field of study is usually indicated as part of the basic course data. A course does not have to have a main field of study, but if it does not, the course cannot count towards the 90 credits in the main field or the 30 credits in the minor field required for a Bachelor’s degree (or the equivalent for a Master’s degree). A course may have two or more main fields of study (‘double classification’), but in that case, the persons responsible for the two main fields of study must agree on this. A double classification means that the course can count towards degrees in both main fields and provide eligibility for higher levels.

If the host department is not responsible for the main field of study that you want to use for a course (for example, if the Department of Statistics wants to set up a course in the main field of study mathematics), the approval of the relevant entity is required. If this is the case, contact your closest senior faculty administrator (utbildningsledare).

It may also be appropriate to create an entirely new main field of study for an interdisciplinary course/programme. This is a process that requires long advance planning. Read more in the Guidelines for approving, monitoring and phasing out degree programmes, main fields of study and subsidiary fields of study.

When designing a new course, it is important to consider what level the course is on compared with other courses in the main field(s) of study. What prior knowledge is required? How can the course contribute to progression towards the degree? Moreover, if you hope to attract students from different disciplines, you need to think about how to formulate the admission requirements so that no one is inadvertently excluded. At the same time, it is important that the admission requirements specify the prior knowledge needed to benefit from the course. Is previous study in one of the main fields of study really necessary, or is a certain amount of experience of studying sufficient to be able to complete the course?

The Student Affairs and Academic Registry Division has recommendations on how to formulate syllabuses and course admission requirements. Different disciplinary domains may also have different guidelines on how admission requirements should be formulated in syllabuses; contact the senior faculty administrator at the relevant faculty office (områdeskansli) for support. If there are different alternative course admission requirements, it is important that they are equivalent so that one group of students does not face higher admission requirements.

The syllabus specifies a code indicating the level of the course. This is stated in relation to other courses in the main field of study and the degree requirements for general degrees. The code indicates, for example, the prior knowledge required (e.g. less than 60 credits of undergraduate course(s)) and whether it includes a degree project.

By decision of the Vice-Chancellor (UFV 2018/1961), each faculty can decide which grading scale(s) to apply. In the case of an inter-faculty course, the faculty affiliation of the host department will determine which grading scales are applicable. In connection with the above decision of the Vice-Chancellor, a guidance document was also produced, which may offer help and support in choosing a grading scale. The guidance for choosing a grading scale is contained in an annex to the decision of the Vice-Chancellor on Grading scales for first and second-cycle courses and programmes (UFV 2018/1961).

By decision of the Vice-Chancellor on rules for Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees (UFV 2010/168), courses at Uppsala University must be for at least 5 credits. However, the standard size of a course varies between disciplinary domains. For example, in the Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, courses must be given with a uniform module size of 5 credits, while the standard size of a course in the Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences is 7.5 credits. For courses delivered entirely outside the regular programme structures (freestanding courses, summer courses, evening courses, etc.) this is not a problem. However, if you want a course to be available as an elective within a degree programme, you need to take this into account. Contact the relevant senior faculty administrator to discuss possible solutions.

The process of setting up a new course/programme needs to be started well in advance. This is particularly true for courses and programmes that need to be coordinated across department and faculty lines. For programmes, a reasonable timeframe may be at least two years before the programme is intended to be delivered for the first time. Read more about the formal procedures in the Guidelines for approving, monitoring and phasing out degree programmes, main fields of study and subsidiary fields of study.

For courses and programmes that will be advertised, course/programme syllabuses must have been adopted when applications for the programme open at the latest. For course instances that are not open for application and are not advertised, syllabuses need to be adopted at least eight weeks before the start of the course. Depending on the faculty to which the course/programme belongs, the process of syllabus adoption may differ in length. Therefore, contact the relevant senior faculty administrator at an early stage of planning to work out a reasonable timetable.