There are at least 2 forms you will need to complete in order to have your Short Program application approved. 

The two templates you will need to complete for the approval process are: the Short Program Approval template and at least one Course Statement template (staff login required). Much of the information you’ll need for these should have been considered as you worked through the Short Program Conceptualisation tool , such as your course objectives, what assessments you will be using, who the market is for your course, and your budget/costings for the course. If you haven’t already worked through this stage, we recommend you head back and work through the prompts and tools provided.  

The Short Program Approval template is the first of the two templates you must complete in order to have your application approved. Within the first section titled Purpose, we recommend you include the following sub-headings to aid the approval panel in making their decision. The remaining sections are quite straight forward, but if you have any questions, please contact your School’s administrative staff. 

• Overview of the Short Program: the background relating to the content that will be taught in the short program and a brief outline of the need for this kind of course (e.g. professional development in your field, bridging course)  
• Market: Who are the target audience for this short program, and is there an appetite for this kind of learning experience? Are other courses like this offered elsewhere, what is your unique selling point? How will you market your course to this audience, how will they know about it? This is where you can identify existing networks that will assist in your marketing. 
• Potential: What future potential does this short program have? Is there an intention to scale up enrolment, or perhaps to develop further short programs in response to market needs? 
• Enrolment: How will students enrol in your course? What mechanism will you use for students to enrol and pay, and have you identified administrative staff within your local area of the university to facilitate this process? Will you have any restrictions/prior knowledge required for enrolling students and how will you determine whether students meet these criteria, or will your course be open to anyone in the public domain? Also, at this stage you’ll need to contact your local administrative staff to determine how your Academic Unit manages student enrolment and payment. 

The Course Statement template is a much shorter document and relates more to planning the course curriculum, like the course objectives and assessments. Details such as the aim of the course and a description of the content that will be covered are also found in this template. As mentioned above, if you have worked through the prompts and tools available on the Conceptualisation page, you will likely have much of the information you need for this template already.  If you plan to apply for a series of 2 or more courses in your short program, you will need to complete a separate Course Statement for each course.

There are typically two levels of approval that must be sought:  

1. Academic Unit Board
2. Executive Dean approval

Please check with your local area regarding meeting dates for the Academic Unit’s Academic Unit Board.  

Once approved, administrative staff will enter your short program into PCMS, and your course will ‘go live’ with a course site in learnonline created for you to begin using.