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Before you can design your short course, continuing professional development (CPD), or executive education course, you will need to submit a proposal for approval.
How to get your course approved
There are different processes to follow depending on whether your proposed course is credit bearing or non-credit bearing.
Non-credit-bearing short courses
If you are planning to run a short course, continuing professional development (CPD), or executive education course which does not award credit, you will need to complete the Course Initiation Questionnaire (CIQ) process. This applies whether the course is fee-paying or free, online or face to face, and whether it offers a UCL certificate of participation or not.
The CIQ process:
- Is a valuable component of your planning
- Allows your department and faculty to approve your course proposal
- Ensures that all short courses reflect the high quality of the UCL brand and provide the best learning experience for learners.
Further information on accessing the templates you need to submit, and the next steps in how the approvals process works, can be found on the Completing the Course Initiation Questionnaire page.
Credit-bearing courses
Standalone short courses which are either new, or derived from modules from UCL programmes and offered to learners outside the UCL timetable, require approval using the process for new module approval, with some specific adjustments.
You can find full details of what you need to do in the Academic Manual, Chapter 10, section 4.3. If you have further enquiries, contact shortcourses@ucl.ac.uk
After your proposal is approved
If your course will be delivered face-to-face you can begin design of content, activities, and assessments (covered in the Course design section) and booking any facilities you might need, such as rooms, equipment, or catering.
For online and blended courses, you will need a UCL Extend or FutureLearn course space.
UCL Extend
For a UCL Extend course please contact the Online Learning team at extend@ucl.ac.uk, including the course title submitted to the CIQ submission portal. We can then:
• Set up a course (using the standard template - password bloomsbury)
• Create a booking product
• Enrol all relevant members of staff
• Provide any learning design or technical support that is needed.
FutureLearn
For a FutureLearn course, please contact the Online Learning team at futurelearn@ucl.ac.uk, including the course title submitted to the CIQ submission portal.
The Online Learning team must also propose the course to FutureLearn and can supply all required course components and documentation. Information can be transferred from your submitted CIQ, and will form the basis of your course enrolment page once it has been reviewed by FutureLearn copywriters.