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.

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
	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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Course Plan 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.

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: 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.

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 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:

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 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.

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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

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):

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 offering.

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Standard Constraint Types

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Specialised Constraint Types

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The following examples will give you a glimpse 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

Example 2

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