The academic regulations provide undergraduate and graduate students with definitions and guidelines about modules, grade descriptions and semesterisation.
These guidelines include information about the maximum and minimum number of credits students can take in a semester, the number of modules a student can fail and still progress to the next stage of their course and which modules can be taken as electives.
According to Lexi Kilmartin, UCD Students Union’s Education Officer and a member of the working group, the aim of the review is mainly to “make the regulations more user friendly” both for staff and students, as well as cleaning up some of the language.
However, she says that more substantive changes could be made, as this as an opportunity to “set the goal posts.”
The Academic Guidelines are reviewed by the Academic Council each year, but many of the regulations for undergraduates have remained the same as when they were first put in place in 2007. “Obviously there are some things that they need to change and need to take into account,” says Kilmartin. “UCD is a very different place than it was ten years ago.”
The regulations also need to take into account some of UCD’s educational partners, such as NCAD and the Institute of Bankers, as their academic regulations come under the university’s regulations. NCAD formed an alliance with UCD in 2010, while the Institute of Bankers became a school of UCD in 2006.
Changes to the regulations could include alterations to how elective classes are offered. Recommendations have come from the Elective’s Review Group and Implementation Group, who wish to bring in more interdisciplinary modules and change how elective modules are distributed.
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