Understanding Course Guides

What:  

A course guide literally contains a guide to a student’s course of study including full descriptions of learning activities, learning outcomes, and assessment details. They provide a blueprint for what you will teach and are therefore a key source of information for you and your students. 

Course guides come in two parts: 

• Part A:  Provides a description of the course, lists the course and program learning outcomes, and identifies the assessment tasks. This is a public document that is approved by RMIT’s Academic Board. This does not change. 
• Part B: Incorporates the information from Part A but additionally supplies specific information about teaching schedules, details of assessment, specific resources and links to further information. This information is updated each time the course is run.  

Why:  

The purpose of a course guide is to provide an official description of a course and its requirements.   

The aim is to ensure consistency of offerings and student experience. For example, if COMM1122 Understanding How to Communicate is run in both Melbourne and Vietnam in 2021, both cohorts should be undertaking comparable assessments and achieving the same learning outcomes as described in the Part A of the course guide.  Likewise, if a course is run by one teacher in 2020 and then by another in 2021 who decides to change the assessments, it’s not the same course and the students will not be achieving the learning they signed up for. What is delivered must consistently follow what is outlined in the Part A. 

Being the official statement for a course, a course guide is also the source of truth for any complaints or appeals by students. 

How:  

When you are allocated a course, the first thing you need to do is review the course guide. You can access the course guide for your course(s) here. 

If you are a Course Coordinator, you may have been given the responsibility of creating your Part B Course Guide (detail of how the course will run this semester, with detail about assessments etc.). You can access the course guide system and user guides here . 

When reviewing the guide for your course, ask yourself: 

• What are the learning outcomes?  What will the students be able to know/do/think once they have ‘successfully completed this course’?  

• How will they be able to prove this?  What are the assessment tasks?  
• How does this course fit into the overall program design? What skills and knowledge will students have developed in earlier courses? Check out the Program Guide* to get an overview of the program and where your course sits within the structure.  

*Program guides provide information including the academic structure, approach to learning and assessment, learning outcomes for graduates, and graduate capabilities. Aligned to the Australian Qualifications Framework. 

Help? Talk to the Course Coordinator /Program Manager.