About
à la Cart(e): Curriculum Alignment and Review Tool (Alacart)
Alacart can be used by any number of Organizations at the U of S. An Organization can be a department, college, or other group. Members of different Organizations can't access each other's data.
Each Organization has a ProgramAdmin user. This person (or people) can set up ProgramOutcomes for their organization. These ProgramOutcomes can then be used to collect data on any number of Programs (ex. a B.Sc. Three Year, a B.Sc. Four Year, a certificate program, etc.). Each Program can also have any number of CustomQuestions associated with it, in case data needs to be gathered that doesn't fit with the ProgramOutcome format (Talked about, Practiced, Feedback received). ProgramAdmins can add Instructors (by NSID) to their Organizations.
The common, default user in Alacart is the Instructor. Any user who exists in the system who hasn't been granted either SystemAdmin or ProgramAdmin is considered an Instructor. These users can see the CourseOfferings that have been assigned to them by either their ProgramAdmin or a SystemAdmin.
Within their Course(s), an Instructor can fill in the ProgramOutcomes and CustomQuestions. (Note: Each Course can only belong to a single Organization in the system.)
Certain staff members within the Gwenna Moss centre have SystemAdmin permissions. SystemAdmin users are able to access all Organizations without needing to be granted permission first.
Data Use
The Gwenna Moss Centre will not release details of academic programs, teaching or assessment methods, or faculty / student comments without prior permission of the academic unit.
Information entered into the Curriculum Alignment Tool (CAT) is primarily for the use of your academic department or college to assist you in inventorying and analysing your curriculum as well as aligning your courses and assessments with your program goals and student learning outcomes. Data gathered within CAT may be used by the GMCTE and its staff in the following additional ways:
- To discuss details of programs with members of your academic unit (instructors or program coordinators, program curriculum committees).
- To assist in training instructors and program coordinators / Curriculum Chairs with entry and reporting functions of the tool
- To improve the tool itself and to confirm proper functioning (e.g., testing reporting functions, examining how CAT links courses to multiple programs).
- For reporting aggregated data to inform program curriculum review processes (e.g., average number of learning outcomes per program), and for identifying trends across campus (e.g., increasing percentage of courses reporting experiential learning over time). No individual program or courses would be identified in such reports.