Committee on Courses of Instruction
Frequently Asked Questions

• What is happening with the course we submitted?

  Check first with the staff of the college, divisional or school committee to which the course form was submitted. If you cannot track the whereabouts of your course proposal, you may call the Senate Office. In the future, we hope to have a Web page that can be used for tracking courses.

• Our course has existed for years and we only want to make a minor change. Why has the Committee raised issues about aspects of the course that are not relevant to the requested change?

  Committee guidelines change over time, and the Committee believes that it is desirable that all courses adhere as closely as possible to existing guidelines. In many cases, older courses do not meet current standards and should be modified to do so. It would require a prohibitive amount of work on the part of both the Committee and the colleges, departments, programs, etc. to re-examine every existing course when guidelines are changed. But when course proposals come before the Committee, it is relatively easy to make the desired changes.

• How is unit credit for a course determined?

  UC Davis policy requires that each unit correspond to three student-hours of work per week. The limiting case is a unit (e.g. laboratory, film-viewing) which requires no outside work, thus generating one unit of credit per three hours of laboratory time. For most lecture and discussion courses, the assumption is that each hour in class requires two hours preparation time. Term papers or extensive writing represent the other extreme, in which a unit might be granted with no corresponding time in class.