FAQs

Weekly Schedules

GeneSIS currently only pushes courses to COMMS from the newest Program of Study (POS) version and only allows one course outline version in COMMS per academic year.

If you are teaching out a course and there is no version of your course outline for the current academic year, course outlines from the old POS can be pulled in manually by the COMMS Administrator. Please contact Linh Kennedy with the list of courses to be pulled in, as well as the program and level they are associated with.

Please note, if the course code in the new POS remains the same as the course version that is being taught out, the old version of the course cannot be manually brought in as COMMS only allows for one course outline per course code for each academic year. The only work around for this scenario is to download the course outline from the previous academic year from COMMS, make any necessary edits and upload it manually to Brightspace. You must also ensure that the new course outline version is left in “Draft” as Brightspace will pull the outline for the current academic year if it has been approved.

Service courses (Gen Ed elective and Communications courses) will appear in your Program Review or Department Review area because they are included in your program of study; however, they are there for your awareness and not for you to approve. These courses will have gone to every Program Coordinator and Chair that is using them in their program, but should only be approved by the users that own the courses.

You cannot change a course description in COMMS. Course descriptions come directly from GeneSIS. There is a window of opportunity in the late fall when changes to courses (including course descriptions) can be made in GeneSIS. Contact your Coordinator or Chair for more information.

When a role has been assigned in COMMS, you will be notified with an automatic email and will see a red dot over the notification bell in the top right-hand corner. You will also receive an email when an outline has been approved.

Once you have completed the Course Information page, where you identify the Contribution to the Program and specify whether the course is Core or Elective, you will be able to work on any section at any time by selecting the section from the menu at the right-hand side of the page. Click on the pencil icon at the top of that section to edit. You can edit all or part of a section, click SAVE at the bottom right-hand side of the page, and return at another time to complete additional portions of the course outline.

Until you edit the Course Information page, where you identify the Contribution to the Program and specify whether the course is Core or Elective, you will not be able to move to any other section in the course outline. Once this window is complete, the Quick Links will appear and you can move to any section in the outline.

This means that you’ve missed validating at least one course learning outcome (CLO) and/or Essential Employability Skill (EES) in the Evaluation/Earning Credit section. To find which one is missing, look at your first assessment activity; make a list of which CLOs and which EESs have not been validated or ticked off. Move to the next assessment activity and stroke off any new CLO or EES that is ticked. Do this for each assessment activity and you’ll be left with the item(s) that were missed, and still need to be validated.

You will need to change the Course Outline template. This is done by clicking on the Document Properties icon at the bottom of the Course Outline (to the left of the Submit button), and then selecting the most appropriate template from the drop-down menu.

Check if the mapping has been entered for the program by clicking on the Mapping menu item at the left of your Dashboard, then click on Maps. If the mapping is not present for either a course or the entire program, it will need to be entered by the department and approved by a Curriculum Consultant.

If you see a red message telling you that there is no information entered in a particular section, you must enter something or COMMS will not allow you to submit the outline for approval. If you have no specific information for the section, you can enter something like “N/A” or “Will be provided by the Instructor.” This will then allow you to submit the outline.

Your list of assignments (with respective weightings) in COMMS should be broad enough that someone who may teach the course next year could use the same assessment breakdown. Keep in mind that assessment categories and weights listed on the course outline apply to all deliveries of the course, including Woodroffe, Perth, Pembroke, and AC Online. Save the specific list of assignments for your Weekly Schedule Document (formerly known as Course Section Information).

In this case, you may have copied invisible formatting (HTML) tags along with your text. To remove them, go back into the text editor (click Edit), highlight the text you pasted in, and then click on the brush icon on the task bar (beside the Size drop-down). A window will appear; click on the button that says Remove All HTML Tags, and then click Cancel. You’re now ready to save that information without any tags that will distort the look of the outline.

No, each Embedded Knowledge and Skill (EKS) must be entered individually. This will allow individual items to be edited or removed in the future without having to re-enter an entire set of Embedded Knowledge and Skills.

You likely have an incorrect template for the Course Outline. To change the template, click on the Document Properties icon at the bottom of the course outline (to the left of the Submit button) and select the most appropriate Contribution to the Program. This will change the Course Outline template.