5-Year Curriculum Update

No, you are not required to update all of them immediately.  We encourage you to prioritize the CORS that should be updated first based on importance to your division.  You can choose to begin with courses that are offered frequently or you can choose to update courses that have the oldest effective date.  

We currently don’t have a consequence in place for not updating courses every 5 years.  Title 5 and accreditation require that we have a process in place to review courses on a regular cycle to ensure accuracy and correct public information. After exploring how other colleges handle this issue, one idea is to not allow a course to be scheduled unless it has been updated in the past 5 years.  The Curriculum Committee is discussing how to move forward with the quinquennial review process.  You are welcome to join us for the discussions.

At the very minimum, course outlines should have updated textbooks that are not older than 5 years. Please remember that CORs are a public document that students and the public have access to. Additionally, the COR is a key document for adjuncts to use when developing their teaching strategies. The curriculum committee would like to invite our faculty colleagues to take a thoughtful approach in the updating process. Questions to consider are:

• Does the catalog description accurately reflect what is being taught and does it give the students relevant information?
• Are the prerequisites necessary or do they need to be changed or removed? Do you need to add or remove a strongly recommended course? (Please remember to add English 1 to your strongly recommended area if you currently have English 1A.)
• Is the content current and reflective of what is being taught? Is there more recent content that needs to be added?
• How are topics in equity infused into the content development?
• Is the content section well written, in-depth, and in outline format? (Please update your content to outline format if it is not currently written as such).
• Does the content area cover what is expected in the measurable objectives?
• Are the typical assignments still relevant?
• Are the textbooks relevant? Are there any low cost or zero cost textbook options available? (check out the Open Educational Resources Initiative)
• Take a look at the Chabot College Course Outline Style Guide 

Courses that have not been offered in more than 5 years should be deactivated via the deactivation process in Curricunet.  Once a course has been deactivated, it will be removed from the College Catalog and deactivated in the State Chancellor’s office curriculum inventory.  If you decide in the future that you would like to bring a course back that has been previously deactivated, this process is possible, via the curriculum review process, as long as the course maintains its original intent.

This is a key and pertinent question!  Updating the CORs is an excellent time to review your programs.  Its important to consider the following questions:
 

• ​If I deactivate a course, how will this affect any programs in the catalog? (remember, courses are used in more than just your area programs).
• ​If I deactivate a course, which programs will I have to update and change to reflect this deactivation?
• ​Are the existing programs in the catalog still viable to be completed since we haven’t offered these courses recently?