Student Success & Engagement supports three types of Academic Plans
Manual Academic Plan templates are managed from the Administrator interface. As an administrator, navigate to the Admin application area and navigate to Academic Planning > Academic Plan Templates. This will navigate you to the list of Academic Plan Templates where you can see a list of all of the existing Academic Plan Templates. This list page allows text searching, and filtering based on status (we'll get to statuses in a minute), as well as sorting based on name and status in the list.
Clicking on an Academic Plan Template's name in the list will navigate you to the edit interface for that Template.
Create a Manual Academic Plan Template
To manually create a new academic plan,
- Click the "New" button above the list of Academic Plan Templates
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Give your new Template a descriptive name including the term. Eg Accounting Technology Fall 2024, and Click the "Save" button. This will automatically navigate you to the edit page for the new Template.
Add a Degree Program
The first thing you may want to do is associate a Degree Program with the template you've created. This is located in the "Planned Credentials in Progress" section. Place your cursor in the text box labeled "Find degree program..." and start typing to find a degree program to use for this template. Once you click a Degree Program, it will be added to the Template.
Don't worry - you can easily remove Degree Programs using the trash can icon.
Add a Term or Category
You can now start building out terms/categories. Let's create a new term titled "Fall Term" and add some courses. First, click the Add Term/Category button at the top of the screen. Enter a term/category name (in our example, "Fall Term"), then click the "Create" button. This will add a term to the Template, as depicted in the screenshot below.
Add another term to the Template. You'll end up with something like the below screenshot. You can re-order terms using the up and down arrows next to the term name.
To start adding required courses to the term, place your cursor in the box labeled "Find and add a course", start typing the name of a course, then select it in the list and click the "Add" button to the right of this text box.
Add a few courses. You will see something like the following screenshot.
As you add courses, you may find that you'd like to re-order the courses to keep them better organized. Simply drag and drop courses to re-order them.
TIP: You can also drag and drop courses between different terms, and in and out of course groups (we'll get to course groups later).
TIP: You have probably noticed little pencil icons next to several items on this interface. This provides a quick way to edit that specific property if you need to.
Course Groups
Course Groups allow you to define a list of courses from which the student must choose a certain number of courses or a certain number of credit hours to take in order to satisfy the requirements of their degree. A common example of this is a list of elective courses. For example, for a Math Elective, a student may be given the choice to take either Quantitative Literacy or Pre-Calculus Algebra. The Course Group allows both options to be listed on the plan.
Create a Course Group
To add a Course Group, click the "Add Group" button at the top of the Term. Enter a name for the new course group, then enter a "1" for the "Minimum Required Courses" field. Click the "Save" button and you'll see that your course group was added to the Term.
This Course Group is configured such that a student must take at least 1 course from within that Course Group in order to satisfy the requirements of that course group. However, there are no courses currently, so let's add some courses to the Course Group we created.
In the "Find and add a course" text box beneath the newly created Course Group, find and add a few courses.
Add another course group with some courses. You'll end up with something like the screenshot below. You can re-order course groups using the up and down arrows next to the course group name.
Course Group Templates
You may find that you'll need to add the same course groups to multiple Academic Plan Templates, and this operation can become extremely tedious. Course Group Templates exist to alleviate this
Navigate to Academic Planning Course Group Templates. Click the "New" button to create a new Course Group Template, Give the new Course Group Template a name, and optionally minimum required courses and minimum required credits values, then click "Save". You'll see the newly created Course Group Template in the list.
To edit a Course Group Template, click on its name in the list. From here you can manage the courses that are a part of this Course Group Template. Add or remove courses from the Course Group Template you created.
The Course Group Template can then be used from the Academic Plan Template interface. Navigate back to an Academic Plan Template by clicking Academic Planning > Academic Plan Templates, then select the Academic Plan Template created earlier. At the bottom of a Term section, you'll see a text box labeled "Find and add a course group". Place your cursor in this box and start typing the name of the Course Group Template, then select the Course Group Template from the list and click the "Add" button. You'll see that the Course Group was created based on your new Course Group Template.
Note that you can now make changes to the Course Group from here and these changes will NOT affect the Course Group Template. The Course Group Template gives you a starting point, but you are free to modify the Course Group once it's added to the Term without worry of affecting others who are using the same Course Group Template.
TIP: If you changed a Course Group Template, that will not affect any Academic Plan Templates who used that Course Group Template to create Course Groups.
If you would like to use your an updated Course Group Template, you will need to navigate to the appropriate Academic Plan Template, delete the Course Group you wish to update, and add the Course Group from the updated Course Group Template.
Academic Plan Template Statuses
As mentioned earlier, each Academic Plan Template has a status. The statuses are:
New
The Academic Plan Template was automatically created by an import job and has not yet been edited by a person. Once edited by a person, the status will automatically be changed to "In Progress."
In Progress
The Academic Plan Template is currently in a "draft" state and not ready to be published. This is the default status for Academic Plan Templates created by administrators from within SS&E.
Pending Review
The Academic Plan Template is finished being modified and is ready to be published once it is reviewed.
Published
The Academic Plan Template is available for use by staff in academic planning screens.