Course Description Review and Editing

1.  Process Overview

A work area is provided in myLane for departments to review and revise course descriptions.  The work area will be available from September 22 to January 13.

Revisions to information other than course descriptions, such as prerequisites, can be requested via the same myLane form.  These requests will be reviewed and, if accepted, will be implemented by Melanie.

Comparison reports will be posted weekly on the ClassBuilder drive during the editing period. Reports will highlight differences between the existing (old) course descriptions and the revised (new) course descriptions in the work area.

At the end of the editing period the work area will be disabled and Melanie will review changes using the same comparison report. She will notify departments if further revisions are needed. Work area will be made available for revisions.

After all changes are approved the work area will be electronically imported into live Banner.

2. Preparing files for departmental editors

If you need to send out the course information to faculty/staff for proofing, follow the directions below to cut and paste into a text editor. Plain text (.txt) files are preferred, because the Word cut and paste function also inlcudes hypertext markup language when you paste backinto Banner, so be careful if using copy/paste from Word. If you do copy/paste from Word back into the Course Description editor you must exit and return, then carefully scan the text for added or altered characters.  Best practice – DO NOT copy/paste back into Banner from Word.

• You may prepare text files from Banner for each course using the following link:
  https://exp.lanecc.edu/pls/lane/bwckctlg.p_disp_dyn_ctlg
• Choose the most recent term, and submit.
• In the Subject menu, highlight all the subjects. You can highlight the first, scroll to the bottom of the box using the arrows, and "Shift" while you click on the last subject.
• In the Division menu, highlight your division.
• Click "Get Courses" box. This will produce a list of your courses in Banner.
• To view complete course information, including restrictions, prerequisites or co-requisites, click on the course number in the blue box to take you to the next level.
• Select all the text for the course, including restrictions and prerequisites, copy, and past into a .txt file or other editor.
• Repeat until all courses are in your .txt file.

3.  Work Area – Course Description Editor

The catalog edit work area will be accessed via myLane, Employee tab, Management/Administrative channel, Staff Administrative Menu, Catalog Course Description Editor. 

Important: Please follow instructions for editing course descriptions in myLane, including character limits:
Please edit course descriptions to 300 characters or less. (Initial statements of prerequisites and ending statements on distance learning are not counted within the 300 character limit.)

**Examples of the good, the bad and ugly in course descriptions**

Note: myLane time-out rules apply – work must be saved by clicking Submit Changes button within 45 minutes or it will be lost.

Access to the editor is granted to people identified as having course edit responsibility in instructional departments.  Access can be granted to others – send ‘L’ number to Alen Bahret or Ray Smith.  Departments will be responsible for controlling access and assuring that those with access have adequate training.

The work area will store all edits when Submit Changes button is pushed.  It will override all previous edits.  Care must be taken to avoid having more than one person edit the same course at the same time.

4.  Comparison Reports

Reports will appear on ClassBuilder drive, Catalog Info, CrseEdit folder.  Report will be a Word document with ‘merge and compare’ feature turned on to highlight the changes.  File name includes date stamp of when file was created.  Be sure to grab the most recent file in the folder if more than one is there.

Do not make your changes in this report.  It is for review only.  All changes must be submitted using the myLane editor.

Copy this file to your local drive before using it. 

Only edited courses will be included in this report.

The comparison report is sorted by department, subject, and course number.  Page breaks are set by department to make it easy to view/save only the page(s) from your department.