Syllabus Checker

Goal

Every term, each syllabus is reviewed by hand against the MCCCD required elements, program-specific additions, and approved institutional language that must appear verbatim rather than paraphrased. The review is slow, its consistency depends on who performs it, and the feedback loop is long enough that an instructor may learn in week six that a required statement was absent in week one. Meanwhile the department has no consolidated view of who has complied.

Audience

Two distinct users with distinct needs. The instructor must act, and therefore requires specific, actionable feedback. The department must monitor, and therefore requires an aggregate view. Conflating these is the design error most compliance systems make.

Process

Faculty submit through the department’s existing Google Form, preserving established practice. Submission triggers a review against the MCCCD Regulation 3.6 required elements, program additions, and the approved seat-hour and Regular and Substantive Interaction language. The instructor receives a response within seconds: confirmation of completeness, or an itemized account of what is absent, with the correct approved wording supplied inline so that no further search is required.

The result is simultaneously written back into the form’s existing response spreadsheet as status columns, giving the department a single sortable view of compliance across all sections without generating an inbox of individual reports.

The system is read-only. It reports, it never revises. No instructor should discover that an automated process has silently altered a document they are accountable for.

Technology

• Built on the department’s existing Google Form and its response spreadsheet with Google Apps Script, so there is nothing new to learn and nothing leaves the district’s Google environment.
• Checks against the MCCCD Regulation 3.6 required elements, program-specific additions, and the approved seat-hour and Regular and Substantive Interaction language, matched verbatim rather than paraphrased.
• Supplies the correct approved wording inline, so a faculty member never has to go searching for it.
• Writes status columns back to the response sheet, giving the department one sortable view of compliance across every section.
• Read-only: it reports, it never revises a document the instructor is accountable for.

Outcomes

Designed against its aims rather than a feature list, so success is defined before launch: a syllabus reviewed in seconds instead of by hand, an instructor told exactly what is missing in week one rather than week six, and a department that sees compliance across all sections at a glance instead of chasing individual reports.

Status

Complete, and awaiting installation on the department account that administers the submission form. No data is collected, nothing leaves the district’s Google environment, and no student data is implicated at any stage, as a syllabus contains none.