Resource Submission Guide

Context

• The purpose of these Guidelines is to inform Colleges how to build and submit resources for review and verification by Woolf. Resource verifications are crucial for ensuring accuracy of course and program workload, and therefore quality of the programs we offer.

• Resource verification depends on multiple factors, as described below. Please note that resources may be approved or rejected based on evolving policies and demands of Woolf teaching methods and practices.

Resource kinds (definitions and influencing factors)

All resources can be divided into contact hours (meetings), supervised hours (office hours or mentoring hours which will also be submitted under meetings), assessment hours (regular and summative assignments) and self-study hours (covered by publications, peer reviewed literature and/or general resources). For example, the suggested distribution of workload hours in a 90 ECTS degree with 2250 hours can be as such:

1. Meetings - 450

2. Office hours - 125

3. PRLs, Publications, General Resources, etc - 1125

4. Regular and Summative assignments - 540

💡Note: The above calculation is an example of a successful course composition. Colleges are suggested to try and follow a similar distribution as closely as possible.

Regular Assignments

• Regular assignments include weekly/monthly submissions, tests, reflections, or any other recurring or unique exercises that students must complete during the course.

• Regular assignments help students develop knowledge, skills and understanding as well as test students’ knowledge and skill learning outcomes during the course.

• Each course must have at least one graded regular assignment. Further, depending on the ECTS weightage of the course, regular assignments may be higher in number. As best practice, they recur weekly, monthly, bi-weekly, etc.

Summative Assignments

• Summative Assignments include projects, final papers, thesis or any other submissions that conclude student studies for the module/course.

• Summative assignments test students’ competencies.

• Each course must have at least one summative assignment. As a best practice, each course should have no more than two summative assignments and make up no more than 50% of the course grade.

• Summative assignments conclude courses, capstone courses and degrees.

• Summative assignments can also be capstone assignments.

• Justify summative assignments over 30 hours and below 30 mins:

  The following justification format should cover your reasoning behind assigned workload.

  • Time needed for research:_____

  • Time needed to understand the assignment:_____

  • Time for discussion:_____

  • Time for completing the assignment:_____

  • Time for review and feedback:_____

Peer-reviewed literature (PRL)

• PRL must be articles or research papers that have gone through an external review process by experts of the same field as the author. Papers must be published in peer-reviewed journals, not merely in conference or seminar proceedings, except as described below.

  • In computer sciences courses, peer-reviewed literature may also encompass conference papers, which often go through a peer-review process before being accepted for presentation. Evidence of peer-review must be provided.

• In exceptional cases, chapters from books by reputed publishers can also be accepted as one of the requirements (e.g. oxford university press, Routledge, Wiley, Norton, etc.). Once minimum PRL requirement is met, book chapters in masters level programs are acceptable too, if from edited volumes.

• For EQF level 7 and above courses, PRL is crucial for proper training of the students in terms of research. However, for lower-level undergraduate courses (EQF 5 and below), widely used reputable academic press may also count as PRLs.

• Publications must not be older than 5 years (with the exception of seminal works in the field of study).

• When submitting a textbook chapter, ensure thorough citation to authenticate its credibility. The basic accepted format for citing a textbook/e-book chapter is: Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. “Chapter Title.” In Title of Book: Subtitle of Book, edited by Editor First Name Last Name, page numbers. Place of Publication: Publisher’s Name, Date. For example: Roberts, Edgar V., and Henry E. Jacobs. “Bringing Your Writing to Life.” In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 120-135. 6th ed. New York: Prentice Hall, 2003

Publications

• Publications include supplemental readings and published works that may or may not be considered peer-reviewed.

  • 💡Note: Lecture notes and hand-written notes are not considered publications. Those need to be submitted under General Material.

General Material

• General materials include any and all additional resources that teachers require students to consume, either as independent resources or as a part of other resources.

• Lecture notes, hand-written notes, diagrams, graphs, images, etc. are all general resources.

  • 💡Note: If the general resource is supplementary to another submitted resource, such as diagrams or slides in support of assignments or lectures, please make sure the general resource’s workload is unique to that resource and therefore, doesn’t get counted twice.

Meetings

• Meetings include all live, recorded sessions, whether scheduled or unscheduled, and irrespective of teacher attendance. This definition covers everything from project discussions to stand-ups without faculty. In the case of online learning, synchronous and asynchronous learning activities under the direction and control of an instructor are considered as contact hours. At least 20% of total learning hours must be contact hours/meetings.

Student workload estimator (Workload calculator)

When submitting a course, colleges must complete the workload calculator for students that estimates the ideal amount of workload to be consumed by each student for a successful course completion. This is only to be done once, during the initial course submission.

💡Note: This list is mandatory unless explicitly stated otherwise. Waiver for missing information needs to be communicated to your POCs before submitting the course.

*Student Success Estimation is part of our compliance needs

Regarding new courses, the workload calculator available on the resource section of the courses needs to be filled out to the best of your ability. Your estimations here do not have to be exact. This is to ensure student success and have a clear understanding of what is the norm of consumption among students for this course. Our team requests you to kindly fill this out in order to allow both the college and Woolf to carry out streamlined processes and fast resource verifications. Below is an example of the calculator with general values for a 75 hour course requirement:

Guidance for submission

1. The above list is mandatory and not limited in itself. As previously stated, resource verification will be done strictly on a case by case basis.

2. The Accreditation team at Woolf reserves the right to change workload hours, resource kinds and to reject any course or request additional resources to be submitted to compensate for required workload.

3. Any drastic changes regarding resource kinds or workload hours need to be communicated to the POC to avoid unnecessary rejections and communication gaps.

4. Resource rejections will be explained and if you require any further clarification, please contact your POC.

5. Resources should add up to a minimum number of hours as dictated by the compliance requirements of the course.

6. Resources submitted without any of the above mandatory fields will be rejected.

7. Resource multipliers are only to be used…

8. Grade weights for regular assignments can be skipped if for ungraded assignments.

9. PRL publications must come attached with the original source. In exceptional cases where minimum requirement for PRL cannot be fulfilled, the college is allowed to complete 50% (or half) of the requirement with book chapters from reputed publishers and papers published by reputed university presses that are widely used.

10. In cases where the Accreditation team deems that the allocated workloads are much larger than the content of the resource, they will contact you for an explanation and workloads will be adjusted accordingly if need be.

11. In case of any confusion regarding the resource kind, please add the resource as general material and assign an appropriate title and description.

12. Publications can only contain books and other published resources which are not peer-reviewed. Class notes, lecture notes, etc., are to be submitted under General Material.

13. All resources should be titled in a clear format. They can either be titled according to the resource kind or in case of literature, the title of the same. Please DO NOT put links in resource titles. Links should be added to descriptions.

14. For any further clarification, please contact your POC and allow them a maximum of 24 business hours to respond.