Overview

A course outline is a guide for all students and instructors to engage in for the whole duration of the course enrolment. Paradigm provides an avenue where you can outline the unit unit’s components and complexities (involved) in creating a Course Outline, e.g. setting up the core and elective units for a course, adding prerequisite, corequisite, disallowed, required units, etc. A Course Outline can contain all possible units that are permitted for inclusion in the course. Once a Course Outline has been created, unit enrolments can be created by the students or the administration staff.Navigation

Course Outline User Interface

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Table of Contents

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exclude	Overview

title	Notes when Enrolling Students via the Course Plan

Notes when Enrolling Students via the Course Plan

We recommend that only staff who have higher permission levels can enrol students in this manner.

The Course Plan method will require the initial setup of a course plan with restrictions, co-requisites, prerequisites, majors, minors, core units, electives, scope, and structure of the course.
By setting up the enrolment in this manner students may, if required, enrol themselves in units.
Units may only be selected if the student meets the requirements previously set up in the system and if the unit is on offer for the time period specified, see Scheduled Units and the Configuration Period - UNIT ENROLMENT settings in Paradigm.
Alternatively, staff, with the designated access level may enrol students either via the Course Plan or via the Student >Course Enrolment> Units page.
This method may be used to bypass course rules and will enrol students into any unit regardless of restrictions, co-requisites, prerequisites, majors, minors, and time period as any date range can be selected.

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The Course Outline screen is intended to be completed by Administration Staff with elevated permission level access. All possible units that contribute to the course, are included in the Course Outline definition, including core, elective, prerequisite, co-requisite, and disallowed units, substitute rules, and constraints. The details included in the Course Outline are used as the basis for defining the Course Plan for a student. The Course Plan can be defined for or by a student, or by administration staff, for a specific student’s course enrolment.

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 upon 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.

Read each section below for an overview of how our Course Outline Interface works, key terms and concepts which are crucial to designing your own outline, and some sample outline coding with output:

Student Course Plan View User Interface

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title	Student Course Plan View - Units Colour Legend

In

Student Course Plan View - Units Colour Legend

On the Student Course Plan page (Student > Course Enrolment > Course Plan), Paradigm

colour

color-coded the units which are included in the course for students to easily identify which ones are available and allowable to enrol. The Course Plan allows staff members to enrol students into units or it allows students to enrol themselves into units with ease.

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Paradigm Label	Colour	Meaning
Image Modified	Green	Student has previously completed this unit. Units with this colour would normally contain the Grade Outcome the student got for the unit competed.
Image Modified	Blue	Student is currently enrolled in this unit. Units with this colour would also contain the equivalent Credit Points.
Image Modified	Orange	Unit is not available because prerequisites have not been met. Prerequisite units should be completed first before these units could become available for enrolment.
Image Modified	White (with 🔲 )	Unit can be selected for enrolment. Units with this colour label would also contain the Session Times for student to choose from (if there are other available session times offered).
Image Modified	White (without 🔲)	Unit has been scheduled, student meets prerequisites, but the enrolment period has not yet opened, and students are prevented from enrolling in the unit. Note: Staff member needs to double check the configuration time period called “UNIT_ENROLMENT”.
Image Modified	Grey	Unit is not scheduled for the next enrolment period. This rule overrides the Orange rule where a prerequisite has not been met, i.e. when a prerequisite has not been met and the unit has not yet been scheduled, the unit will be shown in a grey cell.

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title	Student Course Plan View - Grid

Student Course Plan View - Grid

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The Course Plan is a grid that is restricted to a maximum of 9 columns across the screen, denoted by the columns A through I (the first through to the ninth English letters), usually representing the passage of time by semester or trimester.

The grid is restricted to a maximum of 25 rows down the screen representing the type of unit to be studied. The rows are grouped based on a shared description, so for the units to appear nicely aligned and ordered along a row and in columns across the screen, then the description needs to be exactly the same for the units to be shown on that row.

These

column

columns and row length restrictions are in place to prevent the containing grid structure from becoming unwieldy on devices with smaller display screens. Examples are shown below.

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title	Student Course Plan View - Rows

Student Course Plan View - Rows

Paradigm has a maximum display of 25 rows (as discussed above).

The table in the Course Plan screen works like spreadsheets where columns are labelled as A, B, C, etc., while rows are numbered. Each grid position (or cell in Excel) is defined in the Display Code field when you add a new unit (constraint)

in

on the Courses Outline (Courses > Outline) page. For more details on how

this

these works refer to the next page article: 2. Adding Core and Elective Units. In the sample screenshot below, the Display Code values are the following: for the BEM1003 unit which is under the Stage 1 column and in the first row would have an A1 value, while BEM3002 would be B1, the next row would have the same column values with an incremented row number, e.g. A2 B2, A3 B3, A4 B4, etc.

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title	Student Course Plan View - Columns

Student Course Plan View - Columns

Paradigm has a maximum display of 9 (A-I) columns (as discussed above).

In the sample screenshot below, BEM1003 has a Display Code value of A1 as mentioned above, and since all the units under this belong to the same column Stage 1 (Column 1)we will still use the A-value and just increment the number to match the row location, in this case, BEM2001 would have an A2, and BEM3006 would have an A3 value in the Display Code field.

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The next column would have the letter B and then the row number value. Since Paradigm only supports 9 columns, the column value ends at the letter I.

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For all

the

other grid positions in the table, the concept is the same. It all depends on how you organised the units or constraints

in

on the Courses Outline page. In the example below, since the unit is under the Stage 3 column, which is the second column from the Course column, and it’s on the third row, its grid position or Display Code value is B3.

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Refer to the next page Grid Positioning section to learn more about this.

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Course Outline Key Terms and Concepts

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title	Course Plan Rules

Course Plan Rules

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:

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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:

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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.

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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

an

enrolment will be allowed for BEM2002:

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

Scroll to

the

unit BEM1002 and click the Add As Constraint icon to make the completion of that unit compulsory before

an

enrolment into BEM2002 will be allowed.

Click the Save Outline Constraint button.

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The Unit Id and Constraint Unit Id fields now indicate that there is a dependency on BEM1002 before

an

enrolment into BEM2002 is allowed.

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title	Constraint Rules

Constraint Rules

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

Add a New Constraint Form Fields

Field Name	Brief Overview
Program Constraints ID	Internal System ID given to the course rule. Each constraint will have its own unique code
Course ID	Course ID associated with the base course and student’s course enrolment
Unit ID	Internal System ID assigned to a unit code
Constraint Unit Id	An unit code that is associated with the constraint type
Unit Name	Mainly for readability so that the staff members can more easily identify the unit by its name
Constraint Types	Core Unit, Elective Unit, Prerequisite Unit, Study Area (Minor), Major, Minor, Study Specialisation (Major), Program Prerequisites, Unit program prerequisites, Program Unit Not required, Application Unit, Co-requisite Unit, Disallowed Unit, Substitute Unit, Allow multiple schedule Units, Component Program, Competency Unit, Required Unit Count , Transfer Program *Please refer to the Standard Constraint Types table below for more information
Display Code	Display code indicates where the unit will appear in the grid. The letters A-I (the first to ninth letters of the alphabet) are columns across the screen, whereas numbers 1-25 are the rows down the page. Combining the column and row identifiers then determines the exact grid position where the unit is displayed, such as cell A1, B2, C3
Description	Text that appears in the front of the row to describe this section of the grid, e.g. Core Unit, Electives

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):

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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

into

in at any given point

of

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

offering

offerings.

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title	Standard Constraint Types

Standard Constraint Types

NOTE:

It is highly recommended that you

setup

set up a list of Core and Elective Units prior to further defining their constraint relationships.

Constraint

type options

Type Options	Description
Core Unit	Your institution defines the core units to study this course, often it is compulsory to study this unit within the major or program.
Elective Unit	Your institution defines a list of Elective unit options as part of the major or program.
Prerequisite Unit	Some units of study have a prerequisite. This is a requirement that must be completed before you are able to take this unit.
Co-requisite Unit	Some units of study require you to undertake another specific unit of study at the same time.
Major	Your institution defines which unit components make up the structure of that Major
Minor	Your institution defines which unit components make up the structure of that Minor
Disallowed Unit	Your institution defines that if a student has already completed a unit, they will not be allowed to enrol into this unit
Substitute Unit	Your institution defines a substitute unit to replace a historical unit
Required Unit	This is

a

compulsory that unit must be selected when enrolling via the course plan

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title	Specialised Constraint Types

Specialised Constraint Types

Constraint

type options

Type Options	Description
Optional Prerequisite Unit	There might be more than one Prerequisite unit to choose from
Cross course Prerequisite Unit	Set up Prerequisite units, for students who enrolled in to two courses
Transfer credit Unit	This is a function for bulk auto transfer course credits (If you want to select this option, please raise a ticket in Jira)
Program Prerequisite	This is a function at the course level. One course is a prerequisite for the other
Unit Program Prerequisite	The student will not be able to study this course until they finish the units outlined by the institution
Application Unit	For Applicant portal, allow Applicant to enrol in to units for their auditions and interviews
Block Mode	A special intensive enrolment status
Component Program	A special child and parent relationships between some courses
Transfer Program	An approach to bulk transfer courses (If you want to select this option, please raise a ticket in Jira)
Required Unit Course Count	Students must complete a list of required units to take the next course

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Implications

We recommend that only staff who have higher permission levels can enrol students in this manner.

The Course Plan method will require initial setup of a course plan with restrictions, co-requisites, prerequisites, majors, minors, core units, electives, scope and structure of the course.

By setting up the enrolment in this manner students may, if required, enrol themselves to units.

Units may only be selected if the student meets the requirements previously setup in the system and if the unit is on offer for the time period specified
Alternatively staff, with the designated access level may enrol students either via the course plan or via the Student >Course Enrolment> Units page.
This method may be used to bypass course rules and will enrol students into any unit regardless of restrictions, co-requisites, prerequisites, majors, minors, and time period as any date ranges can be selected.

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Example

Course Outline + Student Course Plan View Examples

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title	Sample Course Plans

Sample Course Plans

The following examples will give you a glimpse

on

of how you code the units or constraints under the Course Outline(Courses > Outline)page and their sample Student Course Plan(Student > Course Enrolment > Course Plan) views.

Example 1

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Example 2
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Versions Compared

Old Version 23

New Version Current

Key

Overview

Notes when Enrolling Students via the Course Plan

Student Course Plan View - Units Colour Legend

Student Course Plan View - Grid

Student Course Plan View - Rows

Student Course Plan View - Columns

Course Plan Rules

Constraint Rules

Add a New Constraint Form Fields

Standard Constraint Types

Specialised Constraint Types

Implications

Sample Course Plans

Page Comparison

Versions Compared

Old Version 23

New Version Current

Key

Overview

Notes when Enrolling Students via the Course Plan

Student Course Plan View - Units Colour Legend

Student Course Plan View - Grid

Student Course Plan View - Rows

Student Course Plan View - Columns

Course Plan Rules

Constraint Rules

Add a New Constraint Form Fields

Standard Constraint Types

Specialised Constraint Types

Implications

Sample Course Plans