1. Seattle Colleges home page
  2. Administration
  3. Web Development
  4. Projects
  5. ACAS

ACAS

About

Launched in 2012, with major revisions made in 2014, Automated Course Approval System is an online web tool that allows anyone in the district to propose new course and revise an existing one while also being able to follow the progress of the proposal as it moves through the review process. Courses must go through several steps before being approved. Once begun, course proposals are viewable by anyone in the district with access to the district intranet.

Instructions

Log into inside.seattlecollegese.edu.

Select ‘Automated Course Approval’ under section ‘INSTRUCTION’.

  • Start New Course: click button ‘Start a New Course Origination’, enter in title of new course and click button ‘Create Course’. Complete the proposal form and submit to begin review process. NOTE: if the course being created already exists at another college – you need to ADOPT the course, not create a new one.
  • Revise Existing Course: click button ‘Revise an Existing Course’, find course to be revised from listing of available courses and click preview to view base information about course and verify it is the correct one to be revised. Click button ‘YES’ to begin revising. Once the changes to the proposal is complete, submit the form to begin review process.
  • Adopt Existing Course: when new course wish to create already exists at another college it must be ‘adopted’. Click button ‘Adopt an Existing Course’, find course to be adopted from listing of available courses and click preview to view base information about course and verify it is the correct one to be adopted. Click button ‘YES’ to adopt and begin revising. NOTE: an adopted course is limited as far as what information can be changed upon adoption. Once adoption has gone through and is approved, then a revision of the course can be done.

Review Process Steps

Through each step of the review process, notification emails are sent to the originator and co-requestor(s) and peer reviewer(s) if any. An Action Required email is sent to those assigned roles in next step of review process. At any point in the review process, the proposal can be returned to the originator for edits. Once edits have been made, the proposal is submitted and the review process begins anew. Depending on the edit requested, some return for edits can be jumped back to the same point in the review process when it was returned.

Submission

When a course proposal is submitted, the review process begins. The proposal is advanced to the next stage of the review process. In addition to default notification emails, a notification email is also sent to originator’s dean to alert them that a proposal is in route to them. Action required email sent to those assigned roles in next step of review process.

1.1 Office of Instruction (OI): (If applicable to college – otherwise skips to district office) preliminary review by the OI for completeness. Minor edits can be performed by OI before pushing proposal to next step, or returns proposal to requestor to make edits.

1.2 District Office: Reviews that course is correctly coded according to State Board Requirements and enters CIP coding pushing proposal to next step. Minor edits can be made before pushing proposal to next step, or return proposal to requestor to make edits.

2. Dean Review: Approves / rejects proposal pushing it to next step. NOTE: If course requires concurrence between colleges, concurrence deans have a two-week window to make comments, after which dean of the college proposal is able to then approve or reject it. Any comments made become part of the proposal package. Courses coded as Academic Transfer, Basic Skills or IBEST require concurrency.

3. Campus Review: (If applicable to college) Allows those assigned this role to make comments for a two-week period after which it is automatically pushed to the next step Any comments made become part of the proposal package.

4. Curriculum Committee Review: The Committee Chair (CC) electronically distributes the proposals to committee members along with comments and instructions. CC can also add other individuals to the distribution list if necessary. CC then makes recommendation on behalf of the committee pushing the proposal to the next step.

5. Vice President of Instruction (VPI) Review: reviews and makes final determination regarding the course proposal. If proposal is approved it is send to Final Distribution.

6. Final Distribution: PDF(s) of course proposal is generated and added to the Course Inventory document centers. If proposal is a revision, existing PDF(s) is moved to Course Inventory Archive document centers prior to generation of new one.

  • Note: Institutional Intent code determines whether a single PDF or a two-part PDF is created. A two-part PDF is generated by the following Intent codes:
    • Academic Transfer (11)
    • Basic Skills/Developmental/Pre-College (12)
    • Academic IBEST/Basic Skills Section (14)
    • Academic IBEST/Academic Section (24)
  • While the Intent codes of Vocational Preparatory (21) and Vocational Supplemental (22) generate a single PDF, the department codes listed below are exceptions and will generate a two-part PDF:
    • ACCT
    • BUS
    • ECED
    • EDUC
    • MFGT
    • NURS