1. Course Outline Basics

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’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.


 

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 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

 

Student Course Plan View - Units Colour Legend

 

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

 

 

Paradigm Label

Colour

Meaning

Paradigm Label

Colour

Meaning

Green

Student has previously completed this unit. Units with this colour would normally contain the Grade Outcome the student got for the unit competed.

Blue

Student is currently enrolled in this unit. Units with this colour would also contain the equivalent Credit Points.

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.

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).

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”.

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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Student Course Plan View - Grid

 

 

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 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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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) on the Courses Outline (Courses > Outline) page. For more details on how these works refer to the next page article: . 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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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. 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.

 

 

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

 

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

 

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Course Outline Key Terms and Concepts

Course Outline + Student Course Plan View Examples