- Purpose: Gives the student a glance at the course’s content; they are not a promotional tool.
- Does it appear in the academic calendar: Yes
- Type of field: Text box with no formatting
- Constraints: 2,200 characters
When writing course descriptions:
- Be succinct (recommendation: no more than 50 words).
- Use present verb tense.
- Style (structure and voice) should match others within the same subject code (i.e., it should not look out of place).
- For example, are they a list of topics or full sentences? Are they written in the second or third person?
- Leave out descriptions of the discipline itself (e.g., no need to describe “anthropology”).
- Leave out specific digital software packages or technology solutions (changes too often and description changes can't be updated fast enough).
- Leave out references to a faculty member’s area of expertise.
- Leave out various planned course assessment methods if assigned instructors have the freedom to choose how to evaluate student work.
- Try to avoid referencing other course numbers (or titles) where possible, but do not reference both a course number and a title.
Helpful tips
- Use the Waterloo Writing Style Guide for spelling, capitalizations, and other conventions.
- The Office of the Registrar has authority to make corrections.
- The University of Waterloo uses the Canadian Oxford Dictionary as a resource for grammar and spelling and all University employees have free access to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary via the Library.
- Whether you are writing a new course description, rewriting an existing course description, or reviewing someone else's description, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary should be used as a reference.
- Some common misspelt words in course descriptions with the correct spelling:
- analyzes (verb, with a z)
- co-operation (with a hyphen)
- decision-making (noun, with a hyphen)
- health care (two words)
- modelling (two ls)
- organization (with a z)
- policy-making (noun, with a hyphen)
- startup (one word)
- well-being (with a hyphen)
- If ever there is a disagreement about spelling, the correct spelling will be dictated by the Waterloo Writing Style Guide or the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, in that order.
- Review existing descriptions within that same course subject, or across the University, to add consistency, keeping the style guide in mind.
- For example, has the academic unit always referred to the United States as “US” or “U.S.”?
- All descriptions are available in the Undergraduate Calendar – don’t be shy about using it as a reference tool.
- The description should always be reviewed when making a proposal to remove grammatical and typographical errors or outdated information.
Kuali CM nuances
- Wrap text from line to line - do not use paragraph breaks (hard returns).
- Do not copy and paste from word processing software (but if you do, replace all special characters - e.g., quotation marks, apostrophes, hyphens/dashes).
- Accents are allowed.