UCLA Research Guides Policies

Note: Information below is for CCLE/Moodle site, and not current BruinLearn/Canva.

Use Course Guides tags for guides to show up in current Course Guides menu.

CCLE course guides all contain links to the Library's guides. These links go to a "middleware" app developed by the Library which tries to find the most specific applicable guide. In order to support this, we have the following rules.

1. We need to differentiate between "all-sessions" course guides (which apply to all offerings of a numbered course, regardless of quarter or section) from "some-sessions" course guides (which apply only to specific quarters and/or sections of a numbered course). The new naming guidelines below reflect this. Quick way to tell the difference: Look only at the "numbered" part of the course name, e.g. Subject 101. Is your course guide intended to be used by every section of Subject 101, including this quarter, last quarter, and two years from now? If yes, it's an "all-sessions" course guide. If no, it's a "some-sessions" guide and needs to have a date in the title, plus a section number or instructor name if it doesn't apply to all sections within that quarter.
2. Both types of course guides need to be "registered" in a central look-up table. Currently this table is being maintained by Renee Romero. Requests to link a specific guide to a course in CCLE should be made via a Jira ticket. Include the Course ID, the link to the CCLE site (both found in the Schedule of Classes) and the URL to the Research Guide.

How the Library Linking App Works

1. Every course website has a link to "Library Research Guides".
2. When a student clicks on that link, the CCLE sends four fields of encoded course info to the Library Linking App: quarter, subject, number, and section (ex: "13W","ENGCOMP","0003    "," 022  "). It may send multiple lines if it's a cross-listed course.
3. The Library Linking App will look in a table of "some-sessions" course guides for one that matches all four fields. If it finds one, it will link the student to that guide. If not...
4. The Library Linking App will ignore the quarter and section info and look in a table of "all-sessions" course guides for one that matches just the subject and number. If it finds one, it will link the student to that guide. If not...
5. The Library Linking App will ignore the course number and look in a table of subject guides for one that matches the subject. If it finds one, it will link the student to that guide. If it's a cross-listed course with multiple subjects it will provide multiple subject guides to choose from.
6. If there's no defined guide for the subject (ex. Honors Collegium), the App will link the student to the LibGuides home page.

Note that the Library link is on the public portion of the CCLE pages, so you can always try it out. If you'd like to see the actual tables, log into Jira, search for the word "CCLE", and sort by date. (Updates occur frequently.) An Excel spreadsheet will be attached.

"All-sessions" course guides are guides which apply to all instances of a specific numbered UCLA course; they may change over time to reflect changes in the curriculum, but the same guide works for all sections and quarters. All-sessions course guides should be named using the following pattern:

• Chemistry 161A: Plant Biochemistry

Use the subject, number, and title exactly as given in the General Catalog. However, you may drop unnecessary letters like initial C or M that may confuse proper sorting, though they should be kept if in common use (like GE Cluster M1, which is never called "GE Cluster 1"). You may also drop following letters like W if they don't serve to distinguish the course from another.

While we don't use the abbreviations in the Schedule of Classes, a few common abbreviations for particularly long program names are used (see list below). Especially long course guide titles can be shortened by taking out sub-titles or even dropping the entire descriptive name. In those cases the full course title should appear in the guide description.

Established Abbreviations

• Chemistry and Biochemistry -> Chemistry
• Chicana and Chicano Studies -> Chicana/o Studies
• Clusters -> Cluster
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies -> LGBTQ Studies

Guides for Course Sequences

Combined guides for AB or ABC course sequences should use just the base course number. Example:

• Cluster 21: History of Modern Thought

Special exceptions may apply if a series has a variant name in common use (the English "10 series").

Guides for Cross-Listed Courses, Examples

Try not to repeat shared elements. As an alternative, just list one course in the title and add a note in the guide description "Same as Art History 101A" (as done in the General Catalog).

• Applied Linguistics 115B/215B: Computer-Enhanced Language Learning and Teaching
• LGBT Studies / Women's Studies 114: Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

"Some-sessions" course guides apply only to specific offerings of a numbered course, usually a specific quarter, but sometimes also one or more specific sections; this is typical for seminar courses, special topic courses, or courses with multiple instructors who require customized content. Even if your course guide will be re-used for future quarters, if it only applies to some sections and/or quarters of Subject 101 then it's a "some-sessions" guide and should be re-named and re-registered every quarter.

"Some-sessions" course guides follow the same basic naming conventions as "all-sessions" course guides, but have some additional rules to indicate their more restricted scope.

• The name must specify the quarter and year in parentheses at the end.
• If the guide applies only to some sections during the quarter, then it must also specify the section (by section number or instructor's last name) after the quarter. (Instructors' names may also be added optionally, even when not required.)
• If the course is a seminar course, use the special topic title (exactly as given in the Schedule of Classes) in place of the broader course title.

Examples

• History 97D: American's Empires (Winter 2011)
• Cluster 21C: Lost in the Crowd? Mobs, Masses, and Multitudes in Modernity (Spring 2011, section 8)
  • alternative: drop "section 8", but change course number to "21C-8"
• English Composition 3: English Composition, Rhetoric, and Language (Winter 2013, Wood)
• Women's Studies 186 / History 187A: Global Feminism, 1850-Present (Winter 2010)

Publication Status

"Some-session" course guides should normally be unpublished or made private after the quarter is over.