Guiding principles for the UG Calendar

Adopted at June 2021 Undergraduate Operations

The Undergraduate Studies Academic Calendar is an online document produced by the Office of the Registrar. It provides applicants and students with official information about the credentials and courses offered, as well as requirements and regulations, from admission to graduation.

Although the Undergraduate Studies Academic Calendar (USAC) is an online document, due to the nature of its content, it is considered as a database more than it is a website: keeping copies of archived content is required, tracking and recording changes made to the published versions is required, the practice of “redirecting” pages is not possible, etc.

Responsibility to publish

Responsibility for the organization, presentation, and production of the academic calendar resides in the Office of the Registrar. Decisions are made in consultation with stakeholders while considering industry best practices and software capabilities and constraints.

The Office of the Registrar will take reasonable steps to ensure accuracy of the academic calendar and will archive the calendars electronically.

The Office of the Registrar publishes the academic calendar annually, effective September 1.

Purpose and goals

As stated in the USAC: The academic calendar “provides official information about courses, programs and plans, related policies, and regulations for both students and applicants, as well as general information about the University. By the act of registration each student becomes bound by the policies of the University of Waterloo. Students are responsible for familiarizing themselves with the policies and regulations, general information, and specific requirements contained in the Calendar.”

In order for the academic calendar to be a helpful guide to students and individuals supporting them until graduation, the academic calendar needs to be:

• Clear and transparent about what is required of applicants and students. Clarity and transparency reduce the need for interpretation and confusion.
• The single source of authority.
  • Websites should point to, and not repeat, content found in the academic calendar.
  • Websites can supplement its content by stating advice-related information or other content that should not be included in the academic calendar.

Organization

Each future iteration of the academic calendar will attempt to organize content to be easier to navigate, providing an enhanced user experience, and have a consistent look and feel throughout the document.

Consistent look and feel

• Provide a templatized look and feel for all pages displaying similar content.
• Use a page naming convention.
• Ensure similar terminology is used.

An enhanced end-user experience

• Reduce repetition by centralizing content where possible.
• Reduce navigation clicks to get to the desired information by combining content (into longer pages).
• Present credentials in a building block structure, with commonalities group together (e.g., degree/program > major > specialization).
• Increase ease of determining what regulations are tied to requirement term (and which are not) and which are tied to course registration (e.g., WHMIS) by reorganizing the navigation.