Course review that reaches a conclusion

Most produce a report and no decision.

Periodic course review is required and is frequently conducted as a data-gathering exercise producing a report that is received and noted. Nothing in that sequence requires anybody to decide whether the course should continue in its current form.

A review that functions asks a question with possible answers including discontinue, restructure, and continue unchanged with reasons. Where the third is chosen it should be argued rather than defaulted to.

The data that makes it possible is ordinary: enrolment trend, completion, progression, results distribution, feedback and where graduates went. Most providers hold all of it and assemble it only for the review, which means nobody has been watching it in between.

The uncomfortable review is the one where the data suggests a course is not working. Those are the reviews that matter and they are the ones most likely to conclude that circumstances were unusual this year.

Recording the decision and its reasoning is what makes the next review possible, since it establishes what was expected to happen and allows the following cycle to check whether it did.

It is worth adding that a review which concludes a course should continue unchanged must say why in terms of the data. Continuation is the default and the default is exactly what a review exists to test, so an unargued continuation is the outcome that should attract the most scrutiny internally.