Reviewing Academic Calendar Publication Consistency

Protocol status

Calendar consistency is a version-control problem. A date is not reliable until the published page, the source calendar, and the change record agree.

This page describes a review design and its proposed controls. It does not report an executed sample, measured outcomes, or evidence that the controls improved performance.

Review protocol

Planned review sequence

1. Define the calendar population by term, program, and publication channel. Record the source system, the export date, and the pages or documents in scope.
2. Identify the authoritative calendar and its version. Compare the published page with the source for start dates, deadlines, holidays, exam periods, and withdrawal dates.
3. Record every difference with the page, the date, the source value, the published value, and the time observed. Do not correct the page during the review without preserving the original evidence.
4. Review the change record for approved updates. A recent change may explain a difference, but it does not prove that every channel was updated. Check the effective date and the audience.
5. Sample the student-facing pages and the internal advising views. A calendar can be correct on the public page and wrong in the system that staff use.
6. Report the differences by type and channel. Assign an owner for each correction and a retest date. The review does not replace the registrar's approval of the calendar.

Operational implications

The authoritative calendar and its version must be named.

A change record does not prove that every channel was updated.

Student-facing and staff-facing views can disagree.

The time of observation matters when a page is being edited.

Corrections should preserve the original published value.

Calendar consistency does not validate the academic policy itself.