UW-Madison faculty and students are currently developing an online course guide that will soon be available to students through the MyUW Portal.
Course Guide"" will allow students to search for class syllabi information and textbooks, as well as read about classes in-depth. It will provide students with an easy way to search all aspects of a class before enrolling.
More than three years ago, Joanne Berg, UW-Madison vice provost for enrollment management, Annie Stunden former chief information officer, Kathy Christoph, director of academic technology and other faculty members began the process of developing Course Guide.
""What we are trying to do now is enhance the the course catalog and eventually make it an interactive tool,"" Berg said. ""By going to the Course Guide through the MyUW Madison portal, you can easily get to class schedule information along with pages that tell students about how professors teach their class.""
Berg said that Phase I of Course Guide will be available in the fall for spring semester class enrollment, adding that students need to remember it is a never-ending project.
""We are building a system that we hope will be very agile. As new technologies are made available or as faculty teach different things in different ways, or if they want to communicate to students about their classes in different ways, we want to be able to easily accommodate that.""
Students will also be able to search for the best deals for textbooks. Last fall, the UW System Board of Regents asked all UW campuses to review textbook costs. UW-Madison's Textbook Costs Task Force constructed a report and presented it to the Regents in early December with the Course Guide listed as a strategy for helping with increasing costs.
According to Berg, students currently do not get information about textbooks early enough to do any meaningful shopping. The Course Guide will provide a ""one-stop"" place for students to find information on textbooks directly from faculty members.
The Textbook Costs Task Force Chair Aaron Brower said it will allow students to search for textbooks in hopes to reduce the struggle in finding the best deals.
""We are working closely with the bookstores in Madison because they have relationships with the faculty. Our goal is to get information to students as early as possible,"" Berg said.
College of Letters and Sciences Dean Gary Sandefur said most faculty members want to do whatever they can to help students save as much money as possible. For more information on Course Guide, log on to http://registrar.wisc.edu/courseguide.
