Unit Titling and Abbreviation protocol

1. This protocol addresses the need for a university standard in relation to unit titling and abbreviation. A university standard on naming conventions will be beneficial to all users of the student database, Callista, in order to ensure consistency of data entry within the unit title field, short title and abbreviation fields when either creating new unit details or maintaining existing details. In addition to the issue of data entry, there is also a need to maintain consistency across unit titles that are printed on academic transcripts.

2. This protocol does not relate to unit coding, for which there is an existing policy and procedure.

3. Exceptions to the unit titling protocol may be granted to meet any professional requirements for a unit title.

Data entry

4. Unit titles should be entered into Callista using sentence case and must use no more than 100 characters in total.

5. The unit title as entered into Callista is the sole authoritative version of that title and must not be varied for any other system or publication.

6. The Abbreviation of the unit title is case-insensitive in Callista. The Abbreviation must use no more than 20 characters in total. The Short Title of the unit in Callista is not used at Monash, although it is a required field. The Short Title field is case-insensitive; the Abbreviation of the unit title should be entered into the Short Title field.

7. Punctuation should not be used when abbreviating in the Short Title or Abbreviation fields in Callista, and there should be no spaces in abbreviations.

8. This protocol also applies to any unit title entered into Callista as a unit title override at the Unit Attempt level (which should only be selected for complementary, exchange or study abroad units).

9. Changes to unit titles in Callista, other than to correct an error, require creation of a new unit version. Faculty Boards are responsible for changes to unit titles, and Government approval is not required.

Content

10. A unit title should be a descriptor which provides a true representation of the academic content of the unit.

11. Faculties are responsible for determining and approving unit titles that they judge as most appropriate, while remaining intelligible to students and, where necessary, prospective employers.

12. Units with two part titles are permitted, as long as both parts reflect the content of the unit (see also section 21).

13. Faculties should give consideration to the currency (‘life expectancy') of the value of unit titles and update them if it is determined as necessary due to any change in discipline knowledge or practices as determined by the faculty.

14. For consistent alphabetic indexing of units in the Handbook and for ease of filtering report data, faculties are required to use a consistent titling convention for study abroad, complementary and exchange units, ie. name of faculty followed by type of unit followed by number if necessary, eg. Arts complementary, Education exchange 1, but not including the word ‘unit'.

Style

15. Acronyms within unit titles should be avoided where possible. Exceptions may include acronyms that are in common usage within the discipline of the unit.

16. Units to be studied in a sequence, or which form part of a progressive suite, should be numbered, eg. Japanese 5.

17. Roman numerals should never be used.

18. Units which form part of a pair, or are the part-time study equivalents of a single full-time unit should be suffixed A, B etc, not numbered. The word 'Part' should not be included, eg. Honours thesis in Japanese A, Honours thesis in Japanese B.

19. The points value of a unit should not form part of the unit title.

20. An ampersand should not be used; use 'and'. Use of ampersands is not in accordance with the Monash editorial style guide, and ampersands may not be recognised by some web browsers.

21. A unit title may have a dependent clause (separated by a colon [:]) or a bracketed clause to define a subtopic, especially where the main clause may be shared by another unit title. Hyphens should not be used to separate clauses as this will result in units sorting separately in indexes from those containing colons, and they may not display correctly online in older web browsers.

22. Where a unit title has a dependent or bracketed clause as described in 21 above, the first word of that clause should be capitalised, eg. ‘Language and society: Sociolinguistics from a German language perspective'.

23. Where unit titles include words describing the level of the unit (eg. Introduction, Intermediate, Advanced), it is recommended that the descriptor follows the unit title proper as a dependent clause, eg. ‘German: Introduction', not ‘Introduction to German'. This approach facilitates more intelligible indexing and listing of units in the Handbook and unit reports.

Related documents