Concourse Audit
Audit is the process through which syllabi are reviewed and approved. This is
often useful for new course approval, template finalization, and section (i.e.,
instructor) syllabus review. The audit process has several stages and is exclusively available to individuals
who have the ability to edit the syllabus or have audit course domain permission. If you'd like to review the Audit domain role, consider reading our article Domain Permissions in Concourse. In order to understand each stage of the auditing process, it is first important
to note that there are two roles within auditing:
- People who
will be editing syllabi, such as instructors.
- People
who will be reviewing syllabi, such as department chairs.
While a dean, curriculum
committee, etc., may also be responsible for yet another stage in the audit workflow,
for the purpose of this article we will continue to refer to them generally as
"auditors."
Stages
There are currently five stages to the Concourse audit workflow, as shown in
the diagram below.
- New: The
syllabus has been created but a manual edit has not yet been made. Content feeds
do not affect the audit status, so any change in Audit status happens when a
syllabus editor makes a change to any of the syllabus items. Note: Accessing an item for editing and then saving without
making any changes is considered a manual edit.
- In Progress: The syllabus has been edited to some extent. The
person editing the syllabus has saved updates to item content or uploaded a syllabus
(Concourse Lite) but has not yet submitted the syllabus for review. This means
that content is still being added to and modified on the syllabus. Going from
New to In Progress occurs automatically on first edit (see Note above).
- Submitted for Review: Edits to the syllabus have been finalized
and the syllabus editor (e.g., the instructor) has submitted the syllabus for
review by an auditor (e.g., department chairperson). The editor can continue
to make changes to the syllabus before it is reviewed. From here the auditor
will decide if the syllabus is considered Reviewed or if more
work needs to be done and move it back to In Progress. Further,
the editor can even undo this step and go back to In Progress themselves
if they want to no longer keep the auditor on notice.
- Reviewed: At this point the auditor has assessed the syllabus
content and approved what they've seen. A Reviewed status means the review process
is essentially finalized and the syllabus is approved, unless the syllabus becomes Modified Since Review.
- Modified Since Review: An audit status becomes Modified
Since Review automatically if a syllabus is edited after it has already been
marked as Reviewed. Auditors can run an Audit Report to see which syllabi have been adjusted since the review and revisit the syllabus
for review and approval.
Process
Now that you understand the stages of the audit workflow, let’s go over
the use of audit in Concourse from first a syllabus editor’s perspective and
then from an auditor’s perspective. Syllabus editors can access the audit area by clicking Audit on the navigation bar:
Once within the audit area, you will have the options of changing the audit status,
providing some notes about the progress of the syllabus throughout the audit
workflow, and alerting auditors and editors that a change has been made. Below
the update form, you will see the audit trail, which describes when the audit
status has changed, who performed the action, and any associated messages.
This will include both user-initiated (e.g. Submitted For Review) and
automatic (e.g. New) entries.
To make a change to the audit status, simply use the drop-down to make your selection.
You can also provide a detailed message at that time. This may even be
helpful even if the audit status is not changed, such as "I finished working
on course outcomes but I still need to incorporate a schedule." You must
either change the status or include a message in order to add to the audit trail.
Note: Depending on whether you are an editor in the course (someone
who has permission to edit the given syllabus) or an auditor (someone
who has been assign audit course domain permission),
or both, you will have slightly different options when it comes to changing the
audit status as described in the stages at the top of this article.
When notifying editors or auditors, an email message will go
out to the respective users indicating that a change has been made. In
the case of Editors, this will be anyone who is registered for
the course and has permission to edit the syllabus. This will often be an instructor,
but it can also be a curriculum committee member or the proposer of the new course
depending on the purpose of the review.
Checking Auditors will send an email to all of the users who
have audit course permission for the domain in which that course falls. It's typical to include a series of
department chairs, deans, or anyone else involved in the audit process.
When you're ready to add to the audit trail, just click Update.
Finally, you may then be interested in creating audit status reports. To
learn more about audit reports, consider visiting our article Creating an Audit Report.
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