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Cross-listing Senior Level Undergraduate Course as a Graduate Course Standards and Requirements

Statement: Some classes are cross-listed and open to qualified undergraduate and graduate students. This is usually done to alleviate heavy teaching loads, low enrollment, and to take advantage of the synergies that happen when merging different audiences.

 

Goal: All graduate programs will be able to cross-list a limited number of senior-level undergraduate (4XXX) courses as graduate courses. The purpose is to provide additional course options and not limit them to the current maximum of two undergraduate courses that can count toward a graduate degree. This will also help to alleviate the paperwork, documentation, and additional petitions normally required for the process of cross-listing coursework.

 

Definition: For face to face courses, cross-level listing refers to offering two courses, one undergraduate and one graduate that address the same substantive area, and scheduling them to meet at the same time and place, generally with the same instructor. 

 

For online courses (including asynchronous ones), a cross-level listing refers to offering two courses, one undergraduate and one graduate, that address the same substantive area over the same period of time, generally with the same instructor. Online cross-level listings may share the same Canvas shell.  However, for cross-level listing, the classroom/virtual classroom experience is shared but the graduate course is expected to have requirements that are more advanced than the undergraduate course as described in the guidelines below.

 

Guidelines: Generally, academic units are encouraged to offer distinct undergraduate and graduate courses. Prerequisites for each should be made explicit, using existing courses to the greatest extent possible. However, when cross-level listings of graduate and undergraduate courses are deemed appropriate, academic units must adhere to the following additional guidelines:

  1. Assessment measures such as exams, written assignments, computational exercises, etc., should delve more deeply into the content area and be more difficult or complex at the graduate level.
  2. The expectations and learning outcomes of each course must be commensurate with the level of that course. For graduate students, these expectations and outcomes must include more advanced learning through requirements such as additional more sophisticated reading, research projects, course facilitation, experiential activities, and/or the assessment methodology (e.g., weighting of certain more challenging course components more heavily for graduate students) . These expectations must be clearly differentiated from undergraduate student expectations and documented in the syllabus.
  3. The central expectation for graduate students is not only will they do more work, but the work itself will be more complex and advanced in academic content.
  4. Course titles must be related but do not have to be identical.
  5. The course content for the undergraduate and graduate level courses must be sufficiently similar to warrant cross-level listing and to protect undergraduate level students from enrolling in courses they are unprepared for.
  6. Courses not eligible or not approved for cross-level listing may not be co-located in the same classroom or taught simultaneously. Instead, they must be taught separately.

Responsibilities: The instructor, graduate program coordinator, chair, and dean in the department- or college-level units are responsible for ensuring that departments within their units comply with this policy and maintain approval documentation for cross-level listed courses.

Standards and Requirements for Cross-Listed Courses:

  1. According to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) Principles of Accreditation (Comprehensive Standard 3.6.1), the institution offering graduate work must be able to demonstrate that it maintains a substantial difference between undergraduate and graduate instruction. Graduate study must be at a level of complexity and specialization that extends the knowledge and intellectual maturity of the students, "progressively more advanced in academic content than its undergraduate programs" (Comprehensive Standard 3.6.1). Combined instruction of graduate and undergraduate students, if permitted at all, must be structured to ensure appropriate attention to both groups.
  2. The requirements and expectations for students at the undergraduate and graduate levels must be identified in the syllabi. All syllabi must contain clearly identified evidence of substantially greater expectations and student learning outcomes, which operate at an upper level of higher- order thinking for students enrolled for graduate credit. These additional expectations should include requirements such as (a) different and/or additional reading requirements, (b) different and/or additional writing assignments, (c) different and/or additional research projects (e.g., projects of greater complexity).
  3. Cross-listed courses must have one instructor of record who meets the Faculty Credential Guidelines established by SACSCOC and the University for Faculty teaching master's and doctoral level courses (SACSCOC) Section 4.8.2.3).