Course outline guidelines & tool
Updated: May 21, 2026
At its December 2023 meeting, Senate approved revisions to the Course Outline requirements for the undergraduate and graduate academic calendars, effective May 1, 2024.
The approved revisions are intended to:
- Provide instructors with detailed information on what should be included in a course outline,
- Provide students with consistency in course outlines across academic units,
- Provide students with certainty with respect to expectations and learning outcomes, and
- Reduce workload for instructors.
What is a course outline and when is it required?
Course outlines are required for all courses except pro-forma courses (e.g., independent studies, directed research, etc.), Masters Thesis, Doctoral Candidacy and Doctoral Dissertations.
Course outlines communicate to students what they can expect in the course and provide helpful resources to support students’ learning and wellbeing. At the beginning of each course, instructors are responsible for providing their students with a written course outline that includes adequate information.
It is important for course outlines to provide consistent information across academic units and for unit leaders to be able to review and ensure all outlines for courses offered by the academic unit include the necessary information about the course and available resources.
Academic units may adopt discipline- or unit-specific course outline templates that include the baseline information and resources, and other relevant information as appropriate.
In addition to course information, teaching modalities, learning outcomes and assessment methods, course outlines should include Territory acknowledgement. As well, instructors are encouraged to adopt inclusive and universal design for learning principles in developing courses where appropriate. Details are available in the undergraduate and graduate academic calendars.
Course Outlines Management Tool
UVic's new Course Outline Management Tool is now available to all academic untis following a successful pilot period. The tool was developed to help faculty and instructors adhere to course outline requirements and guidelines while significantly lowering the time required to draft documents and manage the process.
Integrated with Brightspace, the tool can automatically populate fields from department templates and Banner, and allows instructors to customize key elements such as course materials and assessments. The tool is designed to support a consistent student experience and reduce faculty and staff workload.
The initiative is jointly led by Learning Teaching and Innovation (LTI) and University Systems.
Sign up for access
Participation is coordinated at the department, school or faculty level. Interested units are asked to have their unit lead or designate contact LTI at ltsisupport@uvic.ca for onboarding support, training and other next steps.