Frequently Asked Questions

How can I edit next term's course outlines?

Depending on when you try to edit course outlines for the upcoming term, you may or may not have automatically gained access to those courses. Permissions for adding courses to course outlines are managed by entries in QUEST. Depending on when your faculty processes this information, it may be fairly late in the current term before you get access to your courses.

There are 3 options for handling this scenario:

1. Utilize the Draft System

2. Have an Admin set up the course for you. Administrators can override access to courses and set up your outline for you (after which you can edit the content)

3. Wait for QUEST to populate instructors

Why not PDF / Word?

Two of the primary goals of the outline.uwaterloo.ca project are consistency and accessibility. By entering your course outlines manually into the system, the resulting document will be guaranteed to have the required sections, and the input process will generally limit styling options to accessible entities.

By entering information manually we also break the course outlines into consistent blocks which can be queried later.

Who can see my outline?

If your outline is:

• Unpublished - only you, deptartment administrators, and other instructors teaching your course can see and edit the course outline

• Published - Anybody with a UW account can view your course outline. Enrolled students will see your course outline on the outline.uwaterloo.ca homepage. Users navigating to the outline URL will be required to authenticate before viewing content.

• Global - Anybody with a URL can view the course outline without logging in. This is useful for instructors or departments who want to post their outline publically on their own website.

Can I have a co-op / grad student / assistant enter my data for me?

Yes – Once you've saved an outline, go to the Dashboard tab and you can grant permissions to any user to edit your course outline.

Alternatively, when you're in the process of creating a new outline, use the "Create & Authorize" button to skip the extra step by authorizing another editor without needing to touch the edit page.

Can I re-use course outlines?

Yes – when editing an outline, click the "Re-use Existing Outline" button on the top right of the Edit page. You can then import any published outline, as well as any draft or unpublished outline you can edit or view.

The QUEST course descriptions, required university boilerplate text, and class schedule will automatically be updated for the current course(s) in the outline.

How do students access their course outlines?

A published course outline will have a link which can be accessed by any authenticated student. Students enrolled in your class will see the outline, once published, on the outline.uwaterloo.ca homepage. See [Link] for more suggestions!

Can students see old course outlines?

Yes! Any published outline can be searched by logged-in members of the university

Is my course outline intellectual property?

No – Policy 73, section 6B clearly states that course outlines fall under "assigned tasks" and are property of the University.

Can I put equations in my course outlines?

Yes – Use the function button on any of the rich content boxes to enter raw LaTeX, which will be rendered using the KaTeX library.