Course Plan Rules

It is imperative that all core units and all elective units that can contribute toward the completion of a course are listed and saved in the course outline, before beginning to create any student’s course plan based on that course outline. The core and elective units must have been saved in Paradigm before any prerequisites or corequisites or any other constraints can be defined for a course outline because these constraints have a direct relationship with the existing core and elective units. A constraint cannot exist without referring to an existing core or elective unit.

There are two types of course plan rules:

• the first set (type core and elective) is solely focused on positioning units on the screen

• the other types define the relationships between the units on the screen

For a prerequisite rule to appear as you intend on the course plan, the unit must already have an existing rule that defines it as either a core or elective i.e. the unit must already appear in the list for the course outline.

Essentially, the prerequisite rule for data entry is:

• the first field defines what the student wants to study

• the second field defines some kind of relationship that may impact whether the student can take the unit they wish to study

Loading the Course and then choosing the Outline option will show a screen such as this, detailing a list of all of the units and constraints that have been defined for a course:

Note that Unit Id BEM1002 is defined as a Core Unit and has a Display Code of B2. Clicking on the Edit icon reveals this information at the bottom of the screen:

NOTE:

More details on grid positioning and how the Student Course Plan User Interface works are discussed here: Grid Positioning. Refer to Step 2 - Add the Units that make up the Course as Core or Elective workflow for coding the Course Outline.

Note that the Constraint Unit Id field is blank, which means that as no constraints apply to this unit, this unit will be available for students to enrol in, as soon as the enrolment period is current, and the unit has been scheduled.

Note that the above image contains different data than the other images above it, unit BEM2002 is now listed to show in cell C2. To add a constraint for this unit, such that unit BEM1002 must have been completed before enrolment will be allowed for BEM2002:

Click the Add Unit icon for the unit BEM2002 to add a constraint for this unit.

Scroll to unit BEM1002 and click the Add As Constraint icon to make the completion of that unit compulsory before enrolment into BEM2002 will be allowed.

Click the Save Outline Constraint button.

The Unit Id and Constraint Unit Id fields now indicate that there is a dependency on BEM1002 before enrolment into BEM2002 is allowed.

NOTE:

For more details on the Constraint Types, refer to the next page: Constraint Types and refer to Step 3 - Add the Constraints between Units to follow Course Progression for a more detailed workflow.

To set up the Course plan / Constraint rules the following information will be required:

• The scope and structure of the course including the units required to complete the course

• Units prerequisites, corequisites, core units, electives, substitute units, previous versions of units

• Accreditation changes

• Majors and Minors available within the Course structure

• Planned unit schedules

More details on the requirements are discussed in Step 1 - Outline the Course Structure, Rules, and Requirements section.

Setting up the logic of your course plan is highly subjective and specific to each institution. Below is an example of how a course plan appears (including showing the display codes) under a student’s course plan (course enrolment):

sample Course Plan

Explanation:

There are two types of rules: one is to determine the visual display of a unit on the course outline screen using the display code. The other is to determine the units that a student is eligible to select or enrol in at any given point in time.

Referring to the above picture, both core and elective sections control the visual grouping. Some education providers might only have Core units throughout their course offerings.