To say that technical jargon is sometimes confusing can feel like the understatement of the century. 🤯 When it comes to our learning management system, Full Fabric tends to use ordinary academic terms, but since words can take on different meanings in different territories, it's important that you know how we chose to use them. 💡 You can find more terminology in our General glossary.

Subject – The representation of the studies of a particular field of study, such as English, European History, Mathematics Advanced and others. Subjects have a code and a name and are merely a means of identification, as it is courses that represent the practical side.

Course – Courses represent the information for studying a subject for a specific class and can be thought of as the intake of a subject, made up of a series of sessions.

Session – A gathering of lecturers and students for the purpose of teaching and learning, involving a location (usually a classroom), a start time and an end time. Can also be described as a lesson or a lecture.

✱ Read more about the relationship between subjects, courses and sessions here.

Academic calendar / Shared calendar – An online timetable that divulges real-time information about past and upcoming lectures and the courses to which they belong. Such information includes, but is not limited to: grades, attendance, lecturers, course syllabi and assignments, just to name a few things. In fact, the calendar is where you manage those details. It's also known as the "shared calendar" because it centralizes and displays every course from every class, though you can easily refine your view by applying filters. You can find more information about the academic calendar here.

Transcript – The collection of subjects for which a student is registered. An academic transcript contains the student’s grades, credits and attendance for each of the courses that they're registered in. Read all about transcripts in this article.

Study plan / Study plan template – A collection of all of the core, elective and extracurricular subjects and courses for a class. A study plan template determines a total number of credits that are required in order for a students to be awarded the degree for the programme. Read all about study plans in this article.

Study plan course – A subject on the study plan template, comprising the following details:

Study plan categories – A category of subjects on the study plan template. Students must take enough subjects to fulfill the required credits for the categories.

✱ Read more about the relationship between the calendar, transcripts and study plans here.

Enrollment plan – A student's personalized version of the class study plan. To elaborate on this: whenever the path function is enabled for the study plan of a class, thereby letting candidates personalize their studies, and the resulting choices deviate from the default structure of the study plan template, an enrollment plan is produced once the application is submitted.

Path – An optional study track, part of a short or long duration programme, consisting of a fixed or personalized set of core and/or elective courses, to let students specialize in a given interest area. For example: if a Bachelor of Ancient History offered a variety of specializations starting in its second year – say, Ancient Egyptian History, Ancient Greek History and Ancient Roman History – all three would be called paths in Full Fabric. More information here.

Transcript grade – The display of a student's final grade on their transcript, which can be displayed as an average or a percentage. If chosen to be displayed as an average (called the transcript grade average), the overall grade will simply be the arithmetic mean of each course's final mark. The alternative is to calculate the fraction of a given number (called the maximum transcript grade), whereby the resulting value will be the final grade. The respective formula is:

Degree class – The classification associated with a numerical grade, used for final grades. For example: between 41 and 54, the degree class is D (Marginal); between 55 and 70, the degree class is C (Adequate); between 71 and 85, the degree class is B (Good); and so on.

Custom transcript course name – A custom name for a specific course for a specific student. Most commonly used for final projects that demand unique names, such as theses. When defined, the custom transcript replaces the standard course name on the student's transcript.

Course type – If it's a core, elective or extracurricular course.

Core subject – A subject that is mandatory for the programme certification.

Elective subject – Optional subjects which the student can choose from. Students may need to register for a certain number of elective subjects in order to fulfill the required credits for the programme.

Extracurricular subject – Optional subjects that students can take for personal enjoyment. They don't award credits, so they don't count towards the degree or certification.

Academic term – A collection of courses, taught over a period of time (for instance, 15 weeks).

Academic year – A collection of academic terms.

Attendance rate – A student's attendance rate is the percentage of sessions attended by the student for a course. It's seen on academic transcripts, as attendance is usually a component of a course's grade. The formula to calculate someone's attendance rate for a course is:

Syllabus – An area in Full Fabric, accessible through the academic calendar to staff, lecturers and students, where faculty members can share information about the sessions of a course, such as the list of lecturers and a summary of what was covered

Assignments – An area in Full Fabric, accessible through the academic calendar to staff, lecturers and students, where faculty members can create and publish assignments. For their part, students can use the Assignments page to submit coursework.

Resources – An area in Full Fabric, accessible through the academic calendar to staff, lecturers and students, where faculty members can share digital educational resources for students to download, such as spreadsheets, audio files, videos, links, PDFs and any other kind of file.

Grade publisher – An editor used by faculty members to publish and unpublish the grades for a course.

Budget code – A code that represents the budget for a class, from which lecturer costs for sessions are deducted.

Lecturer costs – The fees and expenses of a lecturer (for instance, hourly salary, travel and accommodation). Lecturer costs can be managed in the Costs page of a course.

Calendar feed – A web link to import one's scheduled sessions in iCal format to Google Calendar or another external calendar. Staff users import all sessions available, whereas lecturers and students only import the sessions that are relevant to them.

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PUBLISHED: September 30, 2021
​LAST UPDATED: October 7, 2021 at 9:32 a.m.