Academic Secretariat - Creating a special unit

Creating a Special Unit

This procedure should be used only when the unit is being created for an individual student or small group of students. It is not to be used in place of the normal procedure for establishing new units (http://www.secretariat.uwa.edu.au/page/20818).

1. Faculty requests the creation of a Special Unit via email to: unitchanges@admin.uwa.edu.au.

If the unit is a component of another existing unit, the email should include the following details:
- Existing Unit Code
- Special Unit Title
- Enrolled Credit Points Per Semester
- Achievable Credit Points Per Semester
- Teaching Period to be Allocated

If the unit is not a component of another existing unit, the email should include the following details:
- Special Unit Title
- Alpha Prefix of the Special Unit Code (a list of available prefixes is located at http://www.secretariat.uwa.edu.au/home/policies/courseunit?f=103840)
- Unit Level (if the unit will be taught at more than one level, please indicate the lowest level it will be offered)
- Teaching Period to be Allocated
- Enrolled Credit Points Per Semester
- Achievable Credit Points Per Semester
- Owning Organisational Unit (ie School/Faculty/Centre responsible for owning/coordinating the unit)
- Teaching Responsibility & Percentage Allocation (ie School/Centre responsible for teaching the unit & percentage allocated - this determines who will receive funding for the teaching of this unit)
- Special Unit Location
- Special Unit Class

2. SIMS Support creates a new unit code and advises the Faculty, Student Administration and Statistics Office of this code.

3. Faculty completes the ‘Special Unit’ section of a Special Approval form for the student and forwards it to the Administrative Assistant (Enrolments), Student Administration. Special Approval forms are available at http://www.studentadmin.uwa.edu.au/welcome/forms .

4. The Administrative Assistant (Enrolments) makes adjustments to the student’s enrolment and enters details of the Special Unit as a formal comment.

Glossary of terms

Unit Level	0 = Unit restricted to non-award courses 1-6 = Undergraduate. First level unit will be given a code of 1, second level 2 etc. 7 = Honours and higher degree preliminary 8 = Postgraduate coursework 9 = Research
Enrolled Credit Points	Enrolled credit points are the number of credit points in which the student is considered to be enrolled per semester. Enrolled credit points are used to determine a student’s EFTSL, and hence their student contribution amount or tuition fee, and also the funding received by the school for teaching the unit. Note that, due to DEST requirements, all students enrolled in the same unit need to be allocated the same number of credit points and cannot be allocated zero credit points. As a consequence, additional Special Units will need to be created for students if they require a different allocation of credit points.
Achievable Credit Points	Achievable credit points represent the amount of credit a student receives on successful completion of the unit. If multiple schools are responsible for teaching a unit, the achievable credit points are not divided across schools.
Owning Organisational Unit	The school or faculty which owns the unit, and is responsible for coordinating it, although not necessarily teaching it
Teaching Responsibility	The school or faculty responsible for teaching the unit – that is, the organisational unit which employs the academic responsible for instructing the students, and which will receive funding for this teaching.
Teaching Responsibility Percentage	The proportion of teaching this unit for which this organisational unit is responsible. If a unit is taught by multiple organisational units, each organisational unit will have a percentage less than 100%, adding up to the total of 100%. Note that varying the teaching responsibility percentage of a unit taught across different schools requires approval of the relevant heads of school.
Unit Location	The campus(es) at which the unit is offered
Unit Class	The unit classes available include: day / evening / weekend / off-campus / external. On-campus (day/evening/weekend) = attendance is required at the institution on a regular basis. Off-campus = regular attendance is not required, but student attends the institution on an agreed schedule for purposes of supervision and/or instruction. External = NO attendance or regular contact is required, and all study requirements are completed either via correspondence and/or online submission.