WF-01 — Programme Design, Approval, Modification and Closure

This workflow decides OBEF outcomes before any OBEF data exists. Every other workflow in the pilot captures what happens. This one determines what is allowed to happen, and therefore what is capable of being captured. Four fields set here (Internship indicator, Joint/Dual degree program, One Year Program, and Is the program eligible for International Accreditation (Y/N)) between them govern or reshape 18 percentage points of the programme-level framework. None of them can be fixed downstream by better reporting.

1. Purpose

To ensure that every IoL programme is designed, approved, modified and closed through a governed process in which the structural attributes that determine OBEF measurability are decided deliberately, recorded accurately in the programme record, and carried into the CHEDS programme row without translation loss, so that a learner enrolling on a PGDipHPE or MScHPE study plan is enrolling on a plan whose components are capable of being evidenced to the Ministry as well as taught.

2. Scope

Scope statement. This process manages the lifecycle of an IoL academic programme from concept approval, through CAA accreditation, study-plan approval, subsequent modification and periodic re-approval, to formal closure and teach-out.

Applies to. PGDipHPE and MScHPE, and to any future IoL award carrying a Program Code. Includes major and minor curriculum modifications, changes to credit requirements, changes to mode of delivery or mode of study, addition or removal of practicum and mobility components, and the closure and teach-out of a programme.

Does not apply to. Non-credit CE and CME provision (WF-21), micro-credentials that are not embedded in an accredited study plan (WF-22), or individual course specification and course-level change, which is WF-03. Course-level change routes here only when it alters a programme attribute that CHEDS carries.

Applicable requirements. OBEF guide v11.5 KPI 5.2, KPI 5.3, KPI 3.2, KPI 3.3, KPI 2.2; CAA Standards for Licensure and Accreditation; QFEmirates level descriptors for the award level; MBRU curriculum governance policy [IoL to confirm the governing body and its terms of reference]; HEDB Data Dictionary 2026 field definitions for Institute - Academic Programs.xlsx.

The principle that governs everything below. OBEF measures programmes, not departments. A design decision that is not reflected in the programme row is invisible to the framework however carefully it was taken, and a programme attribute recorded by default rather than by decision is a decision made by accident. Every field in section 7 must have a named person who chose its value and a dated record of the choice.

3. Trigger, boundary and endpoint

4. SIPOC

5. Accountability

Process owner. IoL Director of Programmes, or the role able to propose curriculum change to governance and to bind IoL to a partner agreement affecting the study plan.

Escalation.

6. Process steps

1. Receive the concept case or change proposal. Record the proposer, the date, and whether the case originates from WF-04 periodic review, from a partner opportunity, or from a market or workforce need.

2. Run the OBEF design screen. Before the study plan is drafted, test the proposal against the attributes that OBEF reads. This is a five-question screen, and it takes an hour. Ask: is a practicum mandatory and in the study plan; is a CAA-approved mobility or joint option offered; is the nominal duration one year; is a CAA-recognised programmatic accreditor available in the language of instruction; and which courses will carry industry co-development or co-delivery. [CAPTURE] the screen outcome with a date and a name. Serves 3.2, 5.3, 2.2, 5.2, 3.3. This step is the whole reason this workflow ranks where it does. It is cheap before approval and impossible after it.

3. Draft the study plan. Set course structure, credit values, contact hours, sequencing, and the Required Credits for Graduation. Where a practicum is intended to count for KPI 3.2, it must appear here as a named, credit-bearing, mandatory component. [CAPTURE] credit and contact hours per component. Serves 3.2 and 3.3. Decision point. If the practicum is optional or extracurricular, WF-13 cannot register it as an OBEF placement. Resolve here, not later.

4. Confirm the international dimension. Where a dual, joint or outbound mobility option is proposed, confirm with WF-24 that a formal agreement exists or is in negotiation, that CAA pre-approval is sought, and that the mobility is counted within the programme's credit hours and is not less than four weeks or the equivalent of a three-credit-hour course. [CAPTURE] partner name, country, agreement reference, credit treatment. Serves 5.3.

5. Obtain the KPI 5.2 eligibility classification from WF-05. Do not decide it here. WF-05 owns the classification and its dual signature. Record the returned value and its date. [CAPTURE] eligibility value and rationale reference. Serves 5.2.

6. Approve the study plan through curriculum governance. Record the decision, the date, the body and the version of the plan approved. An approval that does not name a plan version cannot later evidence what was approved.

7. Submit to or notify the CAA as the change classification requires. Retain the correspondence. [CAPTURE] Accredited by CAA, Date of CAA-Initial Accreditation where applicable.

8. Set the programme attribute set. Populate every field in section 7 explicitly. A null is not a neutral value in this table; several nulls default in the direction that loses points. [CAPTURE] the full attribute set with the academic year it takes effect from. Serves 5.2, 5.3, 3.2, 2.2.

9. Publish the study plan and hand off. To WF-02 for outcome mapping, WF-03 for course specification, WF-07 for admissions criteria, and WF-13 where a practicum has been created or made mandatory.

10. Operate under change control. Any subsequent change to an attribute in section 7 requires a governance decision and a curriculum-change log entry with the effective academic year. [CAPTURE] change log entry. Serves 3.2, where the log is the evidence for the recently-added mandatory placement provision, and serves 2.2, where a change of nominal duration changes the KPI.

11. Periodic re-approval. On the CAA cycle, and informed by WF-04. Re-run the OBEF design screen at step 2 as part of it.

12. Closure and teach-out. Where a programme closes, agree the teach-out plan, confirm no learner is stranded, and set the programme row status for the correct academic years. Do not delete historic programme rows. Three-year and five-year rolling KPIs read them.

7. OBEF data generated

Capture rule. Two things cannot be reconstructed after the fact. The date a programme attribute changed, and the governance decision that changed it. Every other value in this table can be read off the current programme record. The change log cannot be recreated, and it is the only evidence for the KPI 3.2 recently-added-mandatory-placement provision and the only defence when a three-year rolling average spans a definitional change.

Reproducibility test. A second analyst can read the current attribute set from Institute - Academic Programs.xlsx without asking anyone. They cannot currently reproduce when each value became true, or why. That is the capture defect: IoL has, on the assumption stated below, no curriculum-change log with effective academic years and dated approvals. Building one is action R4.

Assumption, stated as an assumption. This document assumes no dated, per-programme curriculum-change log currently exists in a form that could be produced under evidence request. [IoL to confirm.] If one exists, R4 is a formalisation rather than a build.

8. Max-score design

What this workflow must do to reach the target.

1. Run the OBEF design screen at step 2 on every proposal and every periodic re-approval, before the study plan is drafted. Nothing else in this document matters as much.
2. Populate all four decisive attributes explicitly, never by default, and record who decided and when.
3. Route the KPI 5.2 eligibility question to WF-05 rather than answering it in a spreadsheet.
4. Maintain the curriculum-change log with effective academic years, so that a three-year rolling average spanning a change can be explained rather than defended.
5. Never let a study plan reach publication with a practicum that is intended to count for OBEF but is not mandatory and credit-bearing.

[REDESIGN] actions.

Sequencing note. R2 has the largest point value and the shortest lead time, so it should go to governance first. R1 has the smallest value of the three and the longest lead time, which is precisely why it must be started earliest. R3 costs almost nothing and can be wrong in a way that invalidates a 5-point KPI in both directions, so it should be settled before the next submission regardless of what happens to R1 and R2.

9. Indirect strategy where data cannot be collected

Category 3 applies: the activity genuinely does not exist. The relevant case is KPI 5.3 at programme level. If IoL offers no dual, joint or CAA-approved mobility option, then on the assumption that this is the current position, Joint/Dual degree program is correctly recorded as not offered, the KPI is not counted for that programme, and its 2.0% weight is redistributed across the remaining Pillar 5 KPIs. This is what the framework instructs, and using it is not avoidance.

Redistribution is reallocation, not free money, and this is the point most easily misread. The Score Maximisation Plan models both scenarios and shows the arithmetic plainly: when 5.3 is redistributed, its weight flows to 5.1 and 5.4, and those KPIs show higher contributions than they do in the scenario where 5.3 scores directly. That is why 6.1 and 5.1 carry negative deltas between the two scenarios while getting no worse. Adding one qualifying mobility and scoring 5.3 directly is worth about +2.9 points net of the redistribution it gives up. Redistribution protects a programme from a penalty; it never manufactures points, and a programme with real activity in a redistributed KPI is always better off scoring it.

The classification must be accurate in both directions. Two opposite errors are available. Recording Joint/Dual degree program as offered when no CAA-approved agreement exists inflates the claim and fails on evidence, since Appendix B permits the Ministry to demand the formal agreement documents and the contact data of the students enrolled. Leaving the field null when the programme genuinely offers nothing forfeits the redistribution and scores zero instead of being excluded. Both are classification errors rather than data errors, and both are made in this workflow.

Category 4 has a small presence here. Where an informal international placement, elective or visiting arrangement already happens and would qualify but for the absence of a CAA-approved agreement and credit treatment, the response is not to count it. It is to route it to WF-24 and back into step 4 of this workflow so that the next occurrence qualifies. The distance between an existing informal exchange and a qualifying mobility is often one agreement and three credit hours.

A genuine ambiguity in the guide, flagged rather than resolved. KPI 5.3's programme-level rule counts "any actively enrolled student in a dual, joint or mobility option during the past three years", while the KPI's declared time frame is a three-year rolling average of a percentage. For a binary programme-level outcome it is not stated whether the three-year window is the same window used for the institutional average, nor whether a student who completed a mobility two years ago but has since graduated remains countable. The favourable reading is that the past three years is a look-back window and graduation does not remove the episode. Do not assume it. Put the question to MoHESR, record the answer, and state the basis in the Mechanism of collecting the data field for 5.3.

Boundary check. This workflow must never:

• record Joint/Dual degree program as offered without a CAA pre-approved formal agreement on file;
• record Internship indicator = Y for a programme whose study plan does not in fact require a placement, in order to improve the KPI 3.2 denominator;
• record a programme as not eligible for international accreditation in order to trigger the KPI 5.2 redistribution, where a recognised body accrediting in the language of instruction in fact exists;
• classify a programme as a one-year programme because the KPI 2.2 treatment is preferable, rather than because the credit structure and standard load make it one;
• change a section 7 attribute without a governance decision and a dated change log entry;
• delete or overwrite historic programme rows when a programme closes or changes, since three-year and five-year rolling KPIs read them.

10. Service standards

11. Records and evidence

Appendix B readiness. IoL could most likely produce approved study plans and CAA correspondence within 15 working days today. It could probably not produce a dated curriculum-change log, an eligibility rationale, or a design-screen record for past decisions, because on the stated assumption none of these is currently kept. The first two of those gaps are worth points directly, not just tidiness.

12. Risks and controls

13. Performance measures

The first three measures are the ones this workflow exists to move. A programme can be excellently designed and still lose 18 points to four unpopulated fields, and no amount of teaching quality corrects that.

14. Change control