Table of Contents
Overview
Example Graph (Terms)
Curriculum
Catalog
Scheduling
Integration
Additional Notes
Related Articles
Overview
Curriculum and Catalog dating creates a system of revisions and versions for each curriculum object (course, program) that can be accessed within other Coursedog applications.
Within curriculum, each user-created effective date or term range creates a revision, so long as a revision does not already exist for that range.
Anytime a curriculum object is modified and the dates or terms are not modified or wherever revision already exists, a new version is created. This allows users to create and edit objects in present and future date ranges, while also creating multiple versions of those objects for each date range, allowing a school to seamlessly manage different versions of the curriculum objects.
All course and program templates MUST have effective start date included as part of the template.
Example Graph (Terms)
In this course/program, we have 3 revisions.
In this course/program effective dating is driven off of terms.
Revision 1 extends from Fall 2010 - Fall 2020 and has 3 versions.
Revision 2 extends from Fall 2020 - Fall 2021 and has 2 versions.
Revision 3 extends from Fall 2021 - "Until Next Revision" (an indefinite term end date) and has 1 version.
In the form templates both effective date and effective term fields will be present. Users will use and see effective term but the Coursedog app translates the term to the effective date field.
Curriculum
Overview | Deleting Revisions | Search Functionality | Inventory Display | Terms to Dates
When to Utilize End Dates For Effective Dating
Overview
The course and program view displays: status, version, and effective dating
Users can access different versions of courses and programs by clicking (version). Whenever edits are made to a course or program and the start date/term is NOT modified or revision already exists, a new version is created
Users can access different revisions of courses and programs by clicking "effective dating xx - xx".
Based on if users are utilizing terms or dates, terms or dates will appear in the display and the modal.
Revisions are created whenever start date/term IS modified AND there is no existing revision with that date.
Whenever a user creates a revision that includes part of the term range of another revision, the range of the original revision (revision that includes part of the date range of the new revision) is adjusted in the UI. For the course above, we have added a revision that begins Spring 2023. This modifies the effective dating range UI display of the 2021 Fall Term - Until Next Revision to 2021 Fall Term - 2023 Spring Term. This does not impact the underlying term or date data.
As another example, we have created a new revision with an effective start term of Fall 2022. This again adjusts the display of the "original" revision. This new revision extends until Spring 2023.
Deleting Revisions
In order to delete a revision, open the revision that the user wants to remove using the modal outlined above. Within that revision, submit a "delete course" proposal. This will only delete the revision (if multiple revisions exist), and not the entire course.
Search Functionality
Overview
When using courses search in cards like requisites, WYSIWYG editors, the search will use the course/program effective start date as a filter.
When building requirements in a course/program, courses and programs used to build requisites will be automatically filtered based on the effective date/term data in the course/program that the requisites are being added to.
To avoid building cross-lists off of stale course revisions instead of the latest one, first populate Effective Start Term/Effective Start Date in the proposal and then search for courses in the Cross Listed Courses field. This will allow you to make sure that the search results are displaying the latest revision (prior to or with the same Effective Start Date as the proposal) for the search results.
Example Search Scenarios
Example search scenarios are shown below and attached as a PDF at the bottom of this article.
Using Start and End Dates
Using Only Start Dates
Inventory Display
Within the course and program inventory, users can filter for revisions by either terms or dates.
Terms to Dates
Terms are translated into dates in the application. In the below example, we have defined the effective start date of the Fall 2022 term as August 4 2022 within terms.
When the user inputs the Fall 2022 effective start term, the effective start date field is automatically populated with August 4 2022
When to Utilize End Dates For Effective Dating
Overview | Default Behavior | Use Cases for Effective End Dates | Enabling End Dates
Overview
The effective start date field has a corresponding effective end date field available in the Course and Program Templates (the effective start term field has the corresponding effective end term field as well).
The use of the effective end date field is recommended for specific systems and specific use cases that will be described below. However, by default, Coursedog does not recommend using the end date fields because it is not necessary (see “Default Behavior” below).
Default Behavior
For most use cases, an effective end date isn’t necessary because of the following default behavior:
Let’s say there are two revisions of a course, both with a start date and no end date; Revision A with a start date of 1/1/2020, and Revision B with a start date of 5/20/2022.
Revision A has an implied end date of 5/19/20 because Revision B starts the next day.
Therefore, there is no need to set an end date for Revision A because the system automatically treats it as ending on 5/19/20.
Revision B has no future revisions, so no end date (also known as an “end date of infinity”).
Once Revision C is created, Revision B will have an implied end date be the day before Revision C starts.
Use Cases for Effective End Dates
We recommend enabling end dates for certain SISs (based on the data provided by those systems and how those systems handle dating) and business processes, including:
Colleague (Direct and Ethos).
Homegrown SISs that don’t have a concept of effective dating or revisions.
Any business process that dictates there should not be revisions of any Curriculum entities, or if revisions must be created as new entities.
Enabling End Dates
Follow the below steps to enable end dates:
In the Course/Program templates, add the effective end date field (or effective end term field). You do that by opening the template; clicking “Course Template Fields” under “Question Bank”; and dragging and dropping “Effective End Date” onto your template.
Navigate to Admin > Product Settings and ensure “Enable Effective End Date Filters” is set to “Yes”. You can learn more about that here.
Catalog
Overview
When defining a catalog, a user can utilize effective dating to pull in the correctly dated curriculum data.
User first selects effective dating (dates/terms); user must be consistent with dating used in the curriculum environment.
User then selects start date and end date of the curriculum data they wish to pull into the catalog.
Scheduling
When importing a course from the course catalog (Curriculum Management), the current term’s start date will be applied and available courses will be filtered to match Effective Start Date. This means it will pull the matching revision that fits the term dates.
Users can specify what their default term is within their account settings:
Integration
End Dates Before Start Date
Coursedog's data model itself doesn't support effective end dates that occur prior to (or on the same day as) the effective start date. For schools where this is the case, there is a feature flag that enables a change in the integration behavior, where effective end dates that are less than their start date are removed.
Additional Notes
Administrators have the ability to determine if Curriculum and Catalog “Fetch Requisites Using Latest Revision Even if Future Dated”. Learn how that works here.