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EFFECTIVE DATING: A Detailed View of How it Works in Curriculum & Catalog

Table of Contents

Overview
Revisions & Versions
Effective Term vs Effective Date
When to Use End Dates For Effective Dating
Curriculum
Catalog
Scheduling
Integrations

Using Effective Dating When Your SIS's Definition Doesn't Match Coursedog's
Related Articles

Overview

  • Think of “Effective Dating” as a way to determine when a curricular object (e.g. course, program, or document type) or Catalog is active. 

  • Effective Dating gives you the ability to create and edit objects in present and future date ranges, while also creating multiple versions of those objects for each date range.

  • This is helpful because it allows you to say, for example: “This course revision only applies to Fall 2023, whereas this otherWhat’ course revision applies to Fall 2024”. In other words: thanks to Effective Dating, you can work on and plan for multiple terms and catalogs at the same time.


Revisions & Versions

Overview

  • When you change the effective start date for a course/program/document type, a new revision is created so long as a revision doesn’t already exist with that start date. 

  • When you make additional changes to that course – but the effective start date remains unchanged – you create a new version within that revision. 

  • Note the ability to edit a course or program is tied to role-based access control (RBAC) permissions.


Example Graph (Terms)

  • In the below example, we have 3 term-based revisions.

  • 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.

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Effective Term vs Effective Date

Overview

  • All course/program/document type templates MUST have an effective start date included as part of the template in order to leverage effective dating.

  • Terms are translated into dates in the application. In other words: If you define a Catalog’s effective start term, when you are searching for courses, the application will be looking at the effective start date associated with that term. 

  • If you don’t define an Effective Start Date for a term, the system will search the “Start Date”. 

  • If you prefer to search for dates instead of terms, you can do that but keep in mind those dates will continue to have an impact on search results even if you toggle back to terms. 


Example

In the below example, we have defined the Effective Start Date of the Fall 2023-24 term as August 1, 2023 within terms.

If you then indicate a course’s start term – or a Catalog’s “Effective Start Term” – is “Fall 2023-24”, the effective start date field for that course or catalog is automatically populated with August 1, 2023.

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When to Use End Dates For Effective Dating

Overview | Default Behavior | Use Cases for Effective End Dates | Enabling Effective End Dates | Examples

Overview

  • The effective start date/term field has a corresponding effective end date/term field available in the Course and Program Templates as well as in the Catalog. 

  • Effective end dates do not apply to Document Types. 

  • By default, Coursedog does not recommend using the end date fields because it is not necessary (see “Default Behavior” below).

  • The use of the effective end date field is only recommended for specific systems and specific use cases.

  • The downstream impact of any “effective end dates” you input depends on whether or not an admin has toggled “Enable Effective End Date Filters” to “Yes” (Enabled) or “No” (Disabled) in the Admin Dashboard

  • If “Enable Effective End Date Filters” is set to “No”, but you still add the “Effective End Date” field to your templates, any dates you input for Effective End Date will have no impact in the application.

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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 of the day before Revision C starts.


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Use Cases for Effective End Dates

Who Should Use It

  • We recommend enabling effective end dates if your business process dictates there should not be revisions of any Curriculum entities, or if revisions must be created as new entities. 

  • Your Data Engineer and/or Project Manager will make a recommendation based on your business processes during implementation. 


Methodology

  • If you enable the “Effective End Date Filter”, an object (or revision of that object) will only be returned in a search if the object/revision’s effective start date is on or before the effective start date of the lookup window, AND the object/revision's effective end date is on or before the effective end date of the lookup window. 

  • This means if, for example, a course ends AFTER a program, the course will not be available to that program. This is by design in order to prevent a program from having a course requirement that goes beyond the program’s end date. In other words: How could a student take a course that starts Aug 27th, if the program ends entirely August 28th?


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Enabling Effective End Dates

If you determine your institution needs to use Effective End Dates, you can enable it by following the below steps:

  1. Ensure either the “effective end date” or “effective end term” field is on your Course/Program templates. 

    1. If it isn’t already there, you can add it by opening the template; clicking “Course/Program Template Fields” under “Question Bank”; and dragging and dropping “Effective End Date/Term” onto your template.

    2. Whether you need “Effective End Date” or “Effective End Term” will depend on your SIS. Make sure you add the one that corresponds to your SIS’s terminology.

  2. Navigate to Admin > Product Settings and ensure “Enable Effective End Date Filters” is set to “Yes”. You can learn more about that here.

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Examples

Overview | Using Only Start Dates (Most Common) | Using Start and End Dates (Less Common)

Overview

  • The below example shows the same basic scenario with “Enable Effective End Date Filters” off vs on. 

  • See the PDFs attached to the bottom of this article for more examples. 


Using Only Start Dates (Most Common)


Using Start and End Dates (Less Common)


Curriculum

Overview | Creating Versions | Creating Revisions | Deleting Revisions
Course & Program Pages | Search Functionality


Overview

  • When you open a course, program, or document, the upper right-hand corner of the page displays three things: 

  1. Status (e.g. Active or Inactive)

  2. Version (e.g. Version 2)

  3. Revisions (e.g. Effective Dating: April 15, 2021-2025 Spring Term).

  • Click into “Version” to view/access different versions of the listed revision. 

  • Click into “Effective Dating” to view/access different revisions. 

Creating Versions

Whenever edits are made to a course/program/document and the start date/term is NOT modified or a revision with that date already exists, a new version is automatically created.

Creating Revisions

Overview

  • Revisions are automatically created whenever start date/term is modified AND there is no existing revision with that date.

  • Users can access different revisions by clicking "effective dating xx - xx".

  • Revisions will be named according to terms if the dates input for that revision correspond with the dates defined for that term (e.g. Spring 2021-Spring 2025). If they do not, the revision will be defined by dates (e.g. Jan 3, 2022-July 30, 2025).

Automatic Changes to Effective Dates

  • 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 automatically adjusted in the UI (see Example 1 and Example 2 below).

  • This does not impact the underlying term or date data.


Example 1

For the course shown above, if we add a revision that begins Spring 2023, this will modify the effective dating range UI display of the “2021 Fall Term - Until Next Revision” to “2021 Fall Term - 2023 Spring Term” (shown below). 

Example 2

  • If we create a new revision with an effective start term of Fall 2022, this again adjusts the display of the "original" revision (to “2021 Fall Term - 2022 Fall Term”).

  • The new revision will extend until Spring 2023 because there is already another revision that starts Spring 2023. 

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Deleting Revisions

Overview | Best Practices for Integrated Schools | How to Delete a Revision

Overview

  • The process outlined below under “How To” will only delete the selected revision (if multiple revisions exist), and not the entire course.

  • If only one revision exists, following the below steps will delete the entire course, though for integrated schools the course will likely return after the next nightly merge unless you follow the recommendations outlined under “Best Practices”. 

    • Do not delete the sole revision if you wish to retain the course record. 

    • If you wish to retain the course record, you should instead inactivate the course. 

    • Learn more here.

  • Non-integrated/CSV-only schools can delete revisions in Coursedog. 

  • Proposed revision deletions go through an approval workflow. 


Best Practices for Integrated Schools

  • Whether you should delete first in Coursedog or your SIS can depend on your merge settings. Check with your Coursedog contact if you are unsure of which order is best for your school. 

  • Ultimately the key is that you will need to delete the revision in both places. 

  • If you delete a revision in Coursedog first, it might return to Coursedog after your next nightly merge unless you also delete it from your SIS. Best practice with this approach is to add a post-approval workflow step to the relevant workflow. The purpose of the post-approval workflow step would be to serve as a reminder to delete the revision from your SIS as soon as the proposal is approved. Learn more about post-approval workflow steps

  • If you delete a revision in your SIS first, it will persist in Coursedog until the next nightly merge or possibly even beyond that (depending on your merge settings). If you delete revisions in your SIS first, best practice is to then manually delete the revision in Coursedog as well to ensure there is no disconnect before your nightly merge (otherwise you risk someone making changes to the deleted revision in Coursedog – or possibly even having the course persist, depending on your merge settings).


How to Delete a Revision

Step 1

  • Open the revision you’d like to remove.

  • You can access different revisions by clicking into the displayed revision (image 1) and then selecting the revision from the “Select Course” modal (image 2).


Step 2: Within that revision, click “delete course” to submit a “Delete Course” proposal.

Step 3: Select the applicable form (e.g. Delete Course) and hit “Submit”. 


Step 4

  • Click “Submit proposal” on the next screen.

  • This will trigger an approval workflow.

  • Once the proposal is approved, the revision will be removed. 

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Course & Program Pages

Overview | Example | Browsing Revisions by Date

Overview

  • When viewing Curriculum > Courses or Curriculum > Programs, you can filter for revisions by either terms or dates.

  • If a course or program isn’t showing up, check these filters to see if they’re having an impact on results. 


Example

  • A course with an effective start term of “Fall 2022” will not show up in the below search because the course begins AFTER the start of the search window. 

  • For it to show up, you would need to change the displayed Effective Start Term to Fall 2022 or beyond.  

  • You can change the displayed Effective Start term by clicking into the dropdown menu. 

Browsing Revisions by Date

  • Hit “Dates” if you want to find courses or programs with a specific date range. 

  • Once you switch to a “Dates” view, you will notice that the “Effective Start Date” will automatically populate with the start date for the term that was listed when browsing by terms. You can change this as needed. 

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Search Functionality

Overview | Best Practice | Exceptions | Example Search Scenarios

Overview

  • When searching for courses in cards like requirements, requirement sets, and degree maps – or using the “Embed Course Link” or “Embed Program Link” option in WYSIWYG editors – the search will use the course/program effective start date as a filter.

  • When building requirements in a course or program, courses, programs, and requirement sets used as requirements will be automatically filtered based on the effective date/term data of the course/program that the requirements are being added to.

  • Specifically, an entity will be returned if its start date is on or before the course/program’s start date.

  • If “Enable Effective End Date Filters” is set to “Yes”, the designated end date will also have an impact on the search: The entity will only be returned if its end date is on or after the course/program’s start date as well as on or before the course/program’s end date.


 Effective
Start Dates

Effective
End Dates

“Enable Effective End Date Filters” 

Search Results

The course’s effective start date is on or before the program’s effective start date

n/a

No/Disabled

Course can be accessed in a program’s requirements, degree maps, or requirement sets

The course’s effective start date is on or before the program’s effective start date

The course’s end date is on or before the program’s end date

Yes/Enabled

Course can be accessed in a program’s requirements, degree maps, or requirement sets

The course’s effective start date is after the program’s effective start date. 

n/a

No/Disabled

Course will not return in search results

n/a

The course’s end date is after the program’s

Yes/Enabled

Course will not return in search results



Best Practice

  • 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.


Exceptions


Example Search Scenarios

Overview | Using Only Start Dates (Most Common) | Using Start and End Dates (Less Common)

Overview

  • One Curriculum search scenario is shown below, with “Enable Effective Date Date Filters” set to “No” (most common) and “Yes” (less common). 

  • Although this scenario reflects one use case (e.g. A course or program being accessible in a program’s requirements or degree maps), they technically apply to any method of looking up a course, program, requirement, course set, or requirement set where you can filter by dates or terms. 

  • More examples are attached in the PDF at the bottom of this article.


Using Only Start Dates (Most Common)


Using Start and End Dates (Less Common)


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Catalog

Overview | Defining Dates for a Catalog | Adding Additional Filters | Search Functionality

Overview

When setting up a catalog, you can utilize effective dating to pull in the correctly dated Curriculum data.


Defining Dates for a Catalog

How to Do It | Effective Term vs Effective Date in Catalog Filters | Recommended Setup / Determining Dates

How to Do It

See how to define dates for a Catalog in “Catalog Life Cycle”. 


Effective Term vs Effective Date in Catalog Filters

  • If you use “Effective Start Term” for your Catalog’s effective dating, that will set the effective start date to be the start date of the term. 

  • The user interface (UI) defaults to showing terms. 

  • You need to explicitly click on dates to see if anything is set there that might be impacting filter results (if you switch to dates and manually input values, the app will filter according to those values). 


  • The catalog will pull in the revision of the course/program that matches the displayed/selected effective start term or date.

  • When determining which dates to apply to a catalog, ask yourself: If a new course/program was proposed, and I wouldn’t want that to appear in this catalog, what is the effective start date for that course/program? You will then want to ensure the effective start date for the catalog is before the effective start date for that course/program (to ensure it isn’t included). 

  • If a course revision isn’t being pulled into the catalog you would like for it to be displayed in, best practice is to update the effective start date of the catalog rather than the course. 


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Adding Additional Filters

  • Along with effective dating, you can apply additional filters to determine additional courses, programs, instructors, and departments that can appear in the Catalog.  

  • Any filters you add exist in combination with the selected effective dates. In other words: If you add a program filter that says to only add graduate programs to this catalog, it will only add graduate programs that fall within the selected effective start term/date.

  • Learn more about Defining Catalog Filters

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Search Functionality

Overview

  • A catalog will only include course/program revisions that have an effective start date that is on or before the start date/term of the Catalog.

  • If several match the search, the newest one will appear. 

  • If “Enable Effective End Date Filters” is set to “Yes”, this will also have an impact on which revisions show up in the catalog (see “When to Use End Dates For Effective Dating” above).


 Effective
Start Dates

Effective
End Dates

“Enable Effective End Date Filters” 

Search Results

Course or Program’s effective start date is on or before the start date for the Catalog

n/a

No/Disabled

Course or Program revision will be pulled into the Catalog

Course or Program’s effective start date is on or before the start date for the Catalog

Course or Program’s effective end date is on or before the Catalog’s

Yes/Enabled

Course or Program revision will be pulled into the Catalog

Course or Program’s effective start date is after the start date for the Catalog

n/a

No/Disabled

Course or Program revision will not be in the Catalog

n/a

Course or Program’s effective end date is after the end date of the Catalog

Yes/Enabled

Course or Program revision will not be in the Catalog


Example Search Scenarios

Overview | Using Only Start Dates (Most Common) | Using Start and End Dates (Less Common)

Overview

  • One Catalog search scenario is shown below, with “Enable Effective Date Date Filters” set to “No” (most common) and “Yes” (less common). 

  • Although the below example shows a course, the same logic would apply to whether or not a program would appear in a given catalog. 

  • More examples are attached in the PDF at the bottom of this article.


Using Only Start Dates (Most Common)


Using Start and End Dates (Less Common)


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Scheduling

Overview

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.

Default Term

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Integrations

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.

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Using Effective Dating When Your SIS's Definition Doesn't Match Coursedog's


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