Teaching & Learning

Unit Outline

A Unit Outline communicates to students essential information about the purpose and learning design of your unit. The audience of your unit outline is the students enrolled in your unit.

University policy indicates that certain information about your unit is communicated to students in the Unit Outline by the start date of the unit.

The unit outline should be provided to students through the unit's MyLO site, you may also provide it to them in hard copy, but this is not required.

someone reading a printed Unit Outline document

Akari-sourced Unit Outlines

Akari is now the source of truth for curriculum at the University of Tasmania. After a successful soft launch of using Akari to generate Unit Outlines in 2023, a full University rollout of the process will occur throughout 2024.

More information is available on the Akari - Curriculum Management System and the Akari-sourced Unit Outlines intranet pages (University staff access only).

The Unit Outline Proforma and accompanying information below is provided for staff not yet using Akari to generate Unit Outlines.

Unit Outline Proforma

To assist you to meet your obligation to communicate this information to your students in writing, a Unit Outline Proforma [docx 344KB] has been developed. Throughout the proforma document comments are provided to explain what you should include in each section, and under each heading. If you use this Proforma, and follow the recommendations and instructions in each comment, you can be confident that your students have been provided with the mandated information about your unit. Information about editing this proforma can be found below.

If you are rolling over a Unit Outline from a previous delivery, the most recent updates to the proforma [docx 220KB] (as at 5 December 2022) are provided so that you can copy and replace the relevant text. If you would like to check that earlier changes to the Unit Outline, between July 2020 and February 2022, have also been incorporated in your outline, these are detailed in a separate document covering updates to February 2022. In particular, there were a number of changes in February 2022 to align with the Assessment and Results Procedure approved in January. We suggest using Arial font to assist with readability (uploading a Word option also allows students to adjust text styles to their needs).

When you have finished editing your unit outline, it is recommended that it should undergo peer review.

It should also be noted that assessment criteria should be present in the Unit Outline, not only in the unit's MyLO site.

Unit Outline as Planning tool

The Unit Outline Proforma design implements core features of the constructive alignment framework, so in addition to being a tool for clear communication with students, it has been used by many staff as a planning document. It should be noted, however, that the primary function of a Unit Outline is to communicate essential information to students, and the information included and language used within it should reflect this core purpose.

There are many essential elements of unit planning that are not incorporated into the Unit Outline, and therefore it is recommended that when planning and (re)designing your unit, you use the planning resources on the Planning your Unit page.

The Unit Outline Proforma [docx 344KB] is a document that can be saved and edited in MS Word. To begin using it, download and save to your computer. Click below for further instructions.

Editing the Unit Outline Proforma

Copy and Paste from old Unit Outlines

If you wish to use text from previous Unit Outlines into this new proforma, it is recommended that you Merge Formatting when pasting the text into the new document. It is also recommended that only paragraph text is copied from previous versions, and not headings, as this could result in formatting issues with the Table of Contents or the document generally.

Comments

Guidelines for using the proforma have been inserted as comments. Where appropriate, hyperlinks to useful resources have been inserted in the comments to guide you in some of the content areas.

The Table of Contents is formatted automatically. Once you have completed your document, you will need to update the Contents table.

To do this, right click while hovering over the table, select 'Update Field' and then select 'Update Entire Table' then click 'OK'

Unit Code and Title Footer

You will need to edit the footer on the page with the Table of Contents (page 1) to insert your Unit Code and Unit Title. You can do this by double clicking on the text 'UNIT CODE Unit Title' and then typing in the appropriate information. To return to the main document, go to Design and click on Close Header and Footer.

To remove comments

If you choose to save your unit outline as a Word document, you will need to remove comments from the document.

Word 2013: Go to Review, click on the arrow under Delete and select Delete All Comments in Document.

If you choose to save your document as a PDF, you will need to hide the comments from view.

Word 2010: Go to Review and change the Tracking drop-down menu from Final: Show Markup to Final
Word 2013: Go to Review and click on Show Comments

(This process can be used in reverse so that the comments become visible)

Save

When you have finalised your Unit Outline, you will need to save the document, ready to upload to your unit's MyLO site. When you choose to Save As, choose the file format of docx or pdf, depending on your preference. The way this is done, and the location of the 'save as type' option or field will vary depending on the version of MS Word that you are using.