Teaching & Learning
Unit Outline
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.
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.