ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the ways of planning course updates and estimating course revision effort. The foundations of course update planning include faculty reviews, student evaluations, and, occasionally, accreditors’ and others’ feedback. Best practice is for faculty to review the overall curricula and learning outcomes at least once per year, and to work with designers to identify ways to use advancements in online technologies and pedagogy to teach the material effectively. One of the ways to make course update more efficient is to design courses in a modular fashion, so that future changes will only need to be made in as few modules as possible. It is important to estimate the level of effort required for revisions before they begin, so that the scope can be adjusted to ensure that the work is completed on time. The goals of program evaluation are to guide strategic decisions, such as whether a given program should be updated, merged, restructured, or shut down.
