Course categories are optional identifiers for certain types of courses. Some categories, such as clinical experiences, community-engaged courses, internships, practica, study abroad courses, and undergraduate research opportunities, are public-facing in MyUI, allowing students to search for these types of courses, and to connect them to their engagement records. 

Course categories are not designated using the standard course creation or course revision forms. For information about how to request a category for a course, please see the MAUI Help Guide on this topic.

See below.

The University of Iowa defines a course fee as a charge applied at the course level for consumable expenses directly related to the student’s participation in a course. A course fee should be based on plausible estimates of the anticipated costs or previous records of actual costs and should be kept as low as possible. 

Supplemental course fees must be proposed by the department, approved by the College, and then approved by the University's Miscellaneous Fees Committee. Approved fees are included in MyUI course descriptions. Fees are collected by the Registrar's Office through the University billing system and returned to departments. No fee may be collected directly by instructors or staff, and no materials may ever be sold directly to students by instructors or staff. (Also see policies related to Textbooks and Materials.)

Departments may request a supplemental course fee only to cover specific costs associated with a course, such as consumable educational materials or equipment (e.g. art supplies), required travel expenses for students to visit off-campus sites as part of the course, or fees assessed to pay for services external to the University. A course fee may not be used to develop general revenue, cover standard costs of instructional materials such as syllabi or exams, subsidize students' purchases of textbooks or materials, or cover the costs of staffing courses. The revenue generated may not be used for purposes other than the stated course-related costs. If fees in excess of need are collected, the department must reduce or eliminate the fee in subsequent semesters. Each year, University administration, the University’s Internal Audit department, or the State Auditor’s Office may randomly select a number of course fees to be audited, at which time the responsible college may be asked to justify the account balance or document compliance with this policy.

Supplemental course fee request forms are available at the Registrar's website. Forms must be submitted a year in advance of implementation of the fee. Course fee approval expires after five years.

Courses numbered 4999 and below are undergraduate offerings. Courses numbered 5000 and higher are graduate offerings. Please follow these guidelines when selecting the course number for a new course:

• Courses numbered under 1000 are considered remedial, and students do not earn credit toward graduation for completing them. These numbers should be used very rarely and in consultation with the College.
• Most elementary courses are numbered 1000-1999. An elementary course is broad and introductory, and it should be accessible to students with little prior background in the subject. These courses also tend to be highly structured, with a focus on skills and multiple means of assessing student work. Most General Education CLAS Core courses fall into this category.
• An intermediate course is generally numbered 1999-2999 and is considered best suited for second-year students. Some GE courses are also in this category.
• Courses numbered 3000-3999 are intermediate to advanced offerings.
• An advanced course is numbered 4000-4999. These courses focus on more specialized topics or a specific area of knowledge within a discipline, and they prioritize depth over breadth. They typically assume some prior background in relevant topics or methods.

When creating a new course, please remember that four-digit numbers of previous, discontinued courses may not be reused. Please check the Course Library in MAUI to see what course numbers at the appropriate level are available.

Course repeatability

Course repeatability refers to whether or not students may earn semester hours for multiple (passed) completions of the same course. It does not refer to students completing a course multiple times to improve their grade, which they may do whether or not a course is identified as repeatable. 

The course creation form asks the initiator to indicate whether a course is to be repeatable, and it provides three options: No (the default), Yes - Uncapped, and Yes - Capped. Most CLAS undergraduate courses should use the default option of No, which ensures that students' progress toward graduation contains enough breadth and depth.

For certain types of courses, repeatability for credit could be appropriate. If one of the Yes answers is selected on the course creation form, the initiator will be prompted to select one of the following reasons for making the course repeatable: Skill-Building, Variable Topic, Participatory, Ongoing Work, or Other. Examples of courses that fall into these categories include independent studies, research opportunities, internships, field experience, instrument lessons, participation in theatre and dance productions, and topics courses that do not regularly repeat topics.

CLAS will not approve any undergraduate course to be repeatable an unlimited number of times. Departments should determine the maximum amount of credit they would want a course to grant toward completion of their programs of study and set repeatability caps accordingly.

More information about this field on the Course Creation form can be found in this MAUI Help Guide.

Topics courses

Topics courses (for example, AMST:3050 Topics in American Cultural Studies, ENGL:2463 Topics in African American Literature, or POLI:3701 Special Topics in Politics) function as flexible containers for courses that do not exist in the course library under their own course number. They may be used for special opportunities (such as visiting faculty), to avoid the need to have new courses approved frequently or at the last minute. They may be used for piloting and developing course ideas before a department is certain those ideas should be their own courses. And they provide a way to rotate through specialized topics that all fall under the same general umbrella. Topics courses should have subtitles assigned each semester in the Offerings Planner, to assist students in course selection.

Topics courses are generally designated as repeatable for credit, but they do not have to be. If they are repeatable, the cap should be set relatively low (2 or 3), no one topic should be repeated too often (if it is, it should be its own course), and the learning outcomes should be different for each topic taught under that course number. No repeatable topics course will be approved for General Education CLAS Core status. The reason for this policy is that the learning outcomes for GE CLAS Core courses should be the same every time to ensure those courses continue to meet the area outcomes, but if the learning outcomes for a course are the same every time, that course should not be repeatable for credit.

All University of Iowa courses must adhere to the credit hour standard below; the rationale for an exception for any particular course must be documented and approved first by the College and then by the Office of the Provost. During any future accreditation process of The University of Iowa, compliance with these standards will be reviewed by the Higher Learning Commission. 

The Federal definition of a credit hour states: "A credit hour is an amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of student achievement that is an institutionally-established equivalency that reasonably approximates not less than: 

• One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out-of-class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks;
• Or at least an equivalent amount of work as required in paragraph (1) of this definition for other activities as established by an institution, including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work and other academic work leading toward the awarding of credit hours." 

The institutionally established equivalencies to the Federal definition of the credit hour at The University of Iowa are as follows. These standards apply to both undergraduate and graduate courses. 

• For each semester hour of credit, classes that meet in a face-to-face format must include one 50-minute period with the instructor and two hours of outside of class work for 15 weeks.
  • 1 credit hour = 50 minutes contact + 120 minutes outside work over 15 weeks for a total of 2,550 minutes of student effort.
• One hour of credit may be awarded for laboratory and discussion sections that meet a minimum of 50 minutes per week and a maximum of 150 minutes per week. No more than one credit may be awarded for lab and discussion sections without approval of the College and then of the Office of the Provost.
  • 1 credit hour = 1 to 3 lab and discussion sessions ranging from a total of 50 to 150 minutes.
• Classes that do not have the required face-to-face contact time (for example, hybrid or online courses) meet the credit hour standard if they meet one of the following criteria.
  • The course covers the same material in the same depth as a face-to-face version of the same course.
  • The course has been evaluated by the department and college for content and rigor, and the department and college have approved the s.h. credit to be awarded; this approval must be documented.
• Any off-cycle course must be equivalent in both contact and outside work totals as a semester-length course. If outside work is not assigned, lost hours must be made up through additional contact time.
  • For example, a one semester hour workshop course meeting for 5 days and without assigned outside work would need to meet 8.5 hours per day, calculated as follows:
    • 50 minutes contact time x 15 weeks = 750 minutes total contact time
    • 120 minutes outside work x 15 weeks = 1800 minutes total outside work
    • 750 + 1800 minutes =2,550 minutes total engagement of student in course
    • 2,550 minute = 42.5 hours or 8.5 hours per day for 5 days for 1 semester hour of credit 

NOTE: Standard undergraduate and graduate courses on campus are offered for three or four s.h. credit. Courses that do not meet the credit hour standards outlined above, including those offered for more than four hours, must be reviewed and approved by the College first and then by the Office of the Provost. Requests for credit hour exceptions at the collegiate level should be directed to Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education. 

Cross-referenced courses

• Departments may cross-reference (also known as cross-listing) a course so it appears under each department's offerings.
• Courses are never cross-referenced with a second actual pre-existing course. Instead, cross-referencing is a way to have a course appear in MyUI or on the student's degree audit under a second course code and number. Therefore, the process for cross-referencing does not entail creating two courses and linking them; rather it entails creating one course within its administrative home unit and designating the cross-reference on the course creation (or course revision) form.
• Sometimes identical course numbers are impossible to use for cross-referencing, because one department has already used the number for a different course. In these cases, the cross-referenced numbers should be as close to each other as possible and must at least be at the same level (such at the 1000 level or 2000 level).
• The administrative home of the course is responsible for requesting the cross-reference and sending it through workflow.
• The administrative home of the course should speak with the other department or unit before submitting a request to cross-reference a course. The person completing the course creation or revision form should include in that form that this conversation has taken place.
• Cross-referencing is allowed among more than two departments as long as each unit has agreed to the cross-referencing. The College may ask the administrative home of a course to reduce its number of cross references on a course if the list is so long it interferes with General Catalog formatting.
• Cross-references cannot be added or removed for a particular session once the MyUI schedule is published. Please send forms before the schedule's publication. See the Offerings Planner in MAUI for MyUI publication dates.

Co-existing courses

• Two separate but related courses offered on the same days, at the same times, and in the same room taught by the same instructor are considered co-existing courses.
• That is, two courses with different numbers and titles are offered to one audience when the content and learning outcomes for both offerings can be sufficiently met.
• Generally, co-existing courses are focused on a topic suitable for both undergraduates and graduate students with significant overlap existing and thus allowing the two courses to be listed as co-existing.
• Each course is required to have a separate syllabus with appropriate policies and assignments for each population. The two audiences must have different work and grading systems.
• Students must understand that these different standards and assignments apply to each course.
• To offer a co-existing course, permission must be sought first from the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education.

Refer to the Examination Policies: Midterms and Finals page.

The college encourages CLAS faculty to consider proposing and teaching First-Year Seminars. These small, discussion-based, 1-semester hour courses are only available to students in their first semester at UI, providing a unique opportunity for first-year students to work closely with faculty in a low-stakes environment. 

Because First-Year Seminars (FYS) are not administered by CLAS, instructors should be aware of how their course and compensation policies may differ from those of CLAS. 

Specifically, FYS funds are allocated from the Office of the Provost to the college, from the college to the applicable departments, and from departments to FYS instructors. Allocations are made based on information provided by the Provost Office about approved and verified FYS courses.

• If an instructor receives an acceptance email in the spring from the Provost Office for their Fall FYS course and then accepts a Professional Development Award for that same time period, they will not receive the FYS funds. If another instructor steps in to cover that course, that instructor will receive the funding instead.
• Tenure track and clinical track faculty who teach a FYS course will have their funds allocated as Research. Expenses that are allowed on this account are travel, research-related expenses, and any supplies related to the course. Food, scholarships, and the faculty member's own salary should not be expensed to this account. Certain wages are allowable; please check with your departmental accountant.
• P&S staff, instructional track faculty, and visitors/adjuncts who teach a FYS course will have their funds allocated as Salary plus Fringe. The department will need to submit an HR Appointment form (Special Comp-Payment) for approval. (Note: If the course is off-cycle and does not meet for the full semester, the dates to use on the form should be the dates of the course.)
• First-Year Seminar funds cannot carry over into future years. They must be fully spent in the year in which they are received. If they are not spent, they will be pulled back.

When a course has scheduled obligations outside of the time established for course meetings, those obligations can interfere with students’ other courses, jobs, and family responsibilities. Scheduled obligations outside of class time can include fine arts performances and dress rehearsals; attendance at readings, lectures, plays, or cultural events; or participation in local conferences, research events, or career/networking events. Ideally students would know about these obligations early enough to avoid scheduling conflicts: either during the early registration period, so they can choose alternate courses, or in the first week of classes, so they can make schedule changes without penalty. Unfortunately, sometimes instructors don’t know the dates and times of these events until after classes are underway, meaning they cannot share scheduling details with students until after a conflict is inevitable.

CLAS encourages instructors and departments to do the following when their courses include scheduled obligations outside of class time:

• Indicate in MyUI course descriptions when courses include these types of requirements, especially when the events in question could conflict with other courses. Do not include the specific dates and times of the events (when known), only that the course includes this type of requirement.
• Include as much information as possible about these events in the course syllabus. If the specific dates or times of the events are not known when the course begins, it would still be helpful for students to know when to expect that information, for example, or that the event will occur some time in a particular week or month.
• Consider providing an alternative assignment for students who cannot attend the event, especially when students do not have details about the event until after the point at which they could drop and replace the course in their schedule. Encourage students to talk with you as soon as possible if they are unable to attend a course event and will need an alternative assignment.

For policies related to midterm exams scheduled outside of class time, please refer to this page.

Refer to the Syllabus Requirements and Template page.

Refer to the Textbooks and Materials page.