Synopsis
The Audit feature allows a variety of users to participate in the syllabus development, review, and approval processes all within your Concourse system. The Audit feature is a system-wide configuration setting; if Audit is enabled, all users who can edit a syllabus can submit it for review/approval, but only designated users can approve a syllabus or report upon auditing across a domain.
It is important to note that the Audit feature does not refer to audit logging; in Concourse, Audit refers only to the process of reviewing and approving a syllabus according to your institution’s expectations or requirements. The Audit feature is available for all Concourse systems, both structured and unstructured syllabi (uploaded files). Audit can be enabled at any time.
Key Terms
- Course: the artifact in Concourse that contains the syllabus; auditing is related to the course and not just the syllabus.
- Secondary Navigation: the menu that appears above the syllabus; this is where users access the Audit Trail for a course.
- Auditor: a user with domain audit permission; this user can view and update the Audit Trail for every course in their assigned domain(s). Auditors are not registered for the courses they will audit, and Auditors are not able to edit their assigned courses unless they also have domain edit permission.
- Editor: a user with domain edit permission or permission to edit a syllabus. Editors can update the Audit Trail for courses from In Progress to Submitted for Review.
- Audit Trail: a record of each time a course’s Audit Status has been updated. The Audit Trail includes the status, date and time the status was updated, name and email address of the user who updated the Audit Status, and any messages (optional) they included to Auditors or Editors.
- New: the Audit Status assigned to a course when it is first created in Concourse. Courses with this Audit Status have not been modified in any way.
- In Progress: once a course has been modified in any way, its Audit Status automatically shifts to In Progress.
- Submitted for Review: the Audit Status Editors can manually select to let Auditors know that editing is complete and the syllabus is ready to be viewed according to institutional review processes.
- Reviewed: the Audit Status Auditors can manually select to let Editors know that a course has been reviewed. Auditors may include a message in the Audit Trail at this stage to let Editors know if additional revisions are needed.
- Modified Since Review: if a course is modified in any way after its Audit Status was set to Reviewed, Concourse automatically shifts the Audit Status to Modified Since Review.
- Audit Report: a course-level report available to users with domain permissions; this report displays the percent of a syllabus set that is labeled with each Audit Status; the Audit Report can also be narrowed to present just syllabi that are labeled with a specific Audit Status.
- Statistics Report: a system-level report available to system admins, this report indicates which features are enabled or “On” in the Concourse environment. This is where a Concourse admin can confirm that the Audit feature is turned on for the system.
Important to this Decision
Before making decisions about how your institution uses Concourse, you should consider how stakeholders, systems, timelines, and other factors are impacted. Review the important elements below to be better prepared to make changes to your Concourse configuration or implementation.
Academic leaders and staff whose work is related to accreditation and compliance or the syllabus development process should be consulted when making this decision.
When the Audit feature is enabled, an Audit Trail is available for each syllabus to track its development and approval by designated users; any user who can edit the course’s syllabus can update the course’s Audit Status from In Progress to Submitted for Review. Only designated Auditors can update a course’s Audit Status to Reviewed and update a domain’s Audit Trail en masse. Users with any domain permissions can generate an Audit Report for their assigned domain(s).
Audit can be enabled at any time. If end users are expected to update the Audit Status of their assigned courses, using this feature should be included in training materials and presentations. We recommend consulting all other relevant timelines to ensure that the Audit feature is enabled in your system in time to comply with institutional and/or external requirements.
The Audit feature is enabled at the system level, but the Audit Trail is updated manually by individual users at the course level. Audit Trail messages can be populated manually (instructors, managers, editors, etc.) or en masse (domain auditors) in the Concourse system.
To enable Audit in your Concourse system, submit the request to your implementation team. If your institution has completed the implementation process, you can email
support@campusconcourse.com to make the request.
Institutions may choose to enable the Audit feature to optimize their syllabus development process or to support syllabus content review for quality or conformance. By tracking syllabus development and review with Concourse’s internal tools, there is no need to synchronize multiple systems or worry about discrepant data across platforms. Concourse’s Audit feature tracks when changes are made to a course’s Audit Status and by which user, therefore supporting accurate record-keeping and reporting.
Configuration Options
By default, the Audit feature is enabled in Concourse sandboxes but disabled in Concourse production environments. Feel free to try out the Audit feature in your sandbox environment to get a better sense of how it operates. Your institution may choose:
- Option A: Don’t Enable the Audit Feature in your Production Environment
- Option B: Enable the Audit Feature in your Production Environment
If you have questions about enabling or disabling the Curriculum Vitae feature after reading the options below, reach out to Client Services for guidance.
- Approach: The Audit feature is disabled in your Concourse system by default. If you choose to leave this default setting in place, no action is required. If you leave the Audit feature disabled, you may want to discuss other options for monitoring syllabus development, quality assurance reporting, and compliance reporting.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that populate the majority of syllabus items via template or feed and only expect instructors or editors to populate a few items manually. By not allowing additional editing of pre-populated items, an institution ensures that syllabus content is uniform, accurate, and updated; as a result, there is less need for ensuring that standards and requirements are met in syllabus items containing unique language.
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Not Enabling the Audit Feature: Choosing not to enable Audit means less time spent training instructors how to update the Audit Trail, sending instructors reminders about submitting syllabi for review, and reporting on the Audit process each term. Leaving Audit disabled in production also means that there is not a native function to track syllabus development or quality assurance/compliance review (approval) by different stakeholders at your institution.
- Effort: The time investment required for disabling the Audit feature is minimal; the Audit feature is disabled by default, so your team does not need to take any action if you do not want this feature available in your system.
- Approach: To enable Audit in production, alert Client Services that you would like to opt into this feature. A member of Team Concourse will update your configuration settings and then this feature will be accessible on a system-wide level. All users who have the ability to edit syllabus content can update the Audit Trail on assigned syllabi to Submitted for Review (domain administrators, domain editors, domain auditors, instructors, etc.). Once Audit has been enabled, domain audit permission should be assigned to users who will monitor the syllabus development process; those users should be trained on how to update the Audit Trail (Reviewed status) and generate Audit Reports.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that expect editors and instructors to populate large portions of syllabi rather than populating the majority of syllabus items via template or feed. These institutions may expect syllabus content to reflect the individuality of instructional staff and therefore audit syllabi to confirm that requirements are included in syllabi alongside a variety of unique content. Audit may also be used at these institutions for quality assurance or conformance reporting.
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Enabling the Audit Feature: Choosing to enable Audit improves the process of managing syllabus development each term. Instead of manually tracking syllabus progress in an external tool, an Auditor can view syllabi in Concourse, leave messages for Editors in the Audit Trail, and update the Audit Status within the platform. As with enabling any optional feature, the disadvantage is that end users have to be trained on using the unfamiliar feature. The Audit feature is very straightforward and user friendly, but some editors perceive it as an additional step after they have finished editing a syllabus; as a result, they may need frequent reminders, coaching, and other support to use it effectively.
- Effort: The time investment required for enabling the Audit feature is minimal; a decision-maker on your Concourse team just has to submit a request to Team Concourse to update the configuration setting. Note that internal training materials should be updated to ensure that end users understand how to engage with this feature; the time required to update training materials is likely under two hours.
Post-Decision Changes
Your institution’s needs may change over time and you may need to make changes to your configuration settings. In other words, the configuration decisions you make during the implementation phase might not be as efficient five or ten years afterward. Review the guidance below to better understand how changing this particular decision may affect your Concourse system or deployment in the future.
If your institution decides to enable the Audit feature later, you will need to:
- Determine how Audit will be used in alignment with existing institutional assessment, compliance, and curriculum development methods.
- Update training materials and socialize the intended use and expectations for this feature to all instructors, domain administrators, domain editors, and domain auditors.
- Determine a process and delegate responsibility for reporting upon the Audit process.
The anticipated time investment for enabling Audit later depends on the extent of training and support your end users need.
If your institution initially decides to enable Audit but later disables the feature:
- If Audit Reports should be preserved for posterity, a System Admin can download a CSV of the Audit Report, narrowing the selected syllabi as needed to make the report more digestible.
- Submit a request to Team Concourse to disable the feature.
- Audit will no longer be available on the secondary navigation menu for any user.
- Audit Trails that were previously displayed on courses will no longer be visible.
The anticipated time investment for disabling Audit later is minimal. The removal of the feature from the Concourse interface should be socialized to users so it is not perceived as an error. The most time-consuming part of this transition is likely generating multiple Audit Reports to keep data organized and usable for future reference.
Before making a decision about enabling the Audit feature, you should be familiar with some related issues and contexts. See the following articles for more information:
- Familiarity with domain permissions is useful when determining the responsibilities that will be assigned to Editors and Auditors.
- Learn how easy it is to update the Audit Trail en masse for an entire syllabus set.
- Find out more about using the Audit Report to manage the auditing process at your institution.
Tell Us About Your Experience
Did this article answer your question? If you made a decision like this for your Concourse instance, let us know how it turned out. If we missed something in this article or if you have a question that isn’t addressed in our Knowledge Base, let us know how we can help by reaching out to
support@campusconcourse.com.