Table of Contents
Overview
Permissions
Viewing, Editing & Deleting Course Sets
Creating Course Sets
Defining a Dynamic Course Set
Defining a Static Course Set
Using Course Sets in Requirements
Related Links
Overview
PATH: Curriculum Management > Course Sets
Course sets are used to create a collection of courses that can be referenced in the Simple Requirement Builder. These course sets can be referenced in multiple requirements, and therefore make the requirements more manageable by having a single source of truth for groupings of multiple courses.
You will have the option to define a course set as a defined static list or as a dynamic set of rules.
A Static Course Set is a set of specific courses individually selected. If you wish to add or remove a course from the set, that will need to be done manually.
A Dynamic Course Set is a list of courses based on an attribute such as “Course Title”, “Subject Code”, “Department”, etc. Any changes made to the list based on courses being added or removed will be done dynamically in the system and will not require any manual input.
As with documents, courses, programs, and requirement sets, Course Sets can be effective dated.
Course Set revisioning is supported, but not versioning.
Permissions
The ability to view and edit course sets is granted via Role Based Access Control (RBAC).
Permissions can be changed by an admin at Curriculum Management > Settings > Roles.
Viewing, Editing & Deleting Course Sets
Click into a Course Set to view, edit, and/or delete it.
Each course set has six different fields: Name, Description, Actual Credits (optional), Type (either static or dynamic), “setup static/dynamic course set” (filters used to define the course set), and “Select Effective Dating”.
Below “Set up static/dynamic course set”, there will be a “Courses Table” that identifies every course captured by a dynamic filter.
You will need to click “Save” when you are done editing a Course Set.
Upon saving a Dynamic Course Set, the Courses Table will update.
This list is also refreshed every night, so if a course updates during the day, the Course Set will be updated the next day at the latest.
Creating Course Sets
Overview
This section highlights how to create course sets on a high level, whether you are creating static or dynamic course sets.
Ensure all rules are fully built. In other words, if you add a course set, make sure you have added filters; adding a course set but not defining rule(s) for it could result in unexpected behavior.
Course sets work best when they are specific and thus smaller; this allows students to actually use them.
How to Do It
Navigate to Curriculum > Course Sets.
Select “+Add Course Set”.
Input a name (required) and description for this course set.
Under actual credits, you have the option to define a credit value or range.
This number, if manually defined here, will display alongside the course set in areas where course set credits are used (e.g. program/degree maps and in the public catalog).
If not set here, the value that appears elsewhere will be auto-calculated based on the defined logic.
Manually defining here might be useful if you know the course set will be used in the same way across all requirements. For example: I am going to make a course set of all my introductory writing courses, which may have an auto-calculated value of 500 credits given all the options, but I am going to set Actual Credits to “6” here because I know that each time this course set is used, it will only be used to populate a rule where the student must take 6 credits from this list.
Under “type”, select either “Static” or “Dynamic” from the dropdown menu.
Under “Setup static/dynamic course set”, select “All of” or “Any of” from the dropdown menu. This sets a global rule (either AND or OR) for all of the child rules.
Click the “+” icon as many times as needed to define this course set.
Define your Course Sets’ child rules (See the “Defining a Dynamic Course Set” and “Defining a Static Course Set” sections below for directions specific to each type).
Select an Effective Start Date. If you don't use effective dating at your institution, you can select an arbitrary date in the distant past, e.g. January 1, 1900.
Click “Add” when you are done.
Creating Groups of Rules
If you want to turn a child rule from a single rule to a set of multiple rules, or even a nested set of rules, you can do that by clicking the “convert into group” button (circular arrows) next to the desired row.
This creates another group with a global “all of” or “any of” option.
In the below example of a dynamic course set, there is one “all of” group. Within this “all of” group, there is one child “any of” group and one additional rule.
Building More Than One Nested Group
You can build multiple nested groups – including one nested group within another.
In the below example of a static course set, we have an “any of” group. Within this “any of group,” we have two children “all of” groups. This means that within this course set, students must take any of the two children groups.
Deleting Rules
To remove an individual rule or a rule group, click the “-” button.
Note that removing a group will also remove its children.
Defining a Dynamic Course Set
Overview
Child rules for dynamic course sets allow you to create filters based on the prebuilt fields and requirement levels you have added to your Course Template.
Dynamic course sets can be useful if, for example, you would like to define a set of common core courses for all entering freshman that could be used on nearly every proposal as a requirement/requisite.
Adding Child Rules
Select the field you wish to filter on from the first dropdown.
Select the condition (e.g. contains, does not contain, etc.) from the second dropdown.
Input the value in the third field, if applicable.
Defining a Static Course Set
Overview
In a static course set, you are directly adding courses.
Like dynamic course sets, you can also build filters using multiple layers of and/or logic by selecting “all of” or “any of”.
Adding Child Rules
As with dynamic course sets, you can add child rules, but in this case you will be selecting a course for each rule.
Using Course Sets in Requirements
Overview
Simple requirements can be set up to indicate a user must complete multiple course sets, or that a user must complete a specific number of courses within a course set.
How It Works
When building requirements, "Course Set" will be an available data type for requirement rules. Select it and then search for the course set that you have already created.
Course Sets & Proposals
If a course set is defined as a requirement rule, the name of the course set will show up in the proposal during the approval process.
Course Sets & Dependencies
Overview
The courses contained within a course set will also be included in dependencies.
You can view course dependencies at Curriculum > Courses > (Open Course) > Scroll to the “Dependencies” card.
Example
The below example shows the Dependencies Card for MATH 102 in a scenario where the Math Courses course set contains all math courses, including MATH102.
If the Math Courses course set is a requirement for the BA MATH program, the “Dependencies” card for Math 102 will show that it is a completion requirement for a BA in MATH.
