Having learned the theory behind the concepts sustaining our Student Information System, it's time to learn how to apply them. In other words, how to create courses and sessions on the shared calendar! 😁

➜ How do I create courses and sessions?

➜ How do I associate a course to a class?

If you read the previous article (as you should! 🙃), you'll know by now that everything starts with the study plan. When you create a brand new subject, you have to, among other things, Add a subject code and Add a subject name. The field Courses, as you can see on the image below, is blocked from editing, because since a subject can be taught on several courses and programmes, it follows that it remain available to All courses by default – so much that a subject can only be added to the study plan once (for instance, you can't add "Advanced Strategy" twice).

Courses are created on the calendar, making it our next destination. To open the shared calendar, click Academics on the sidebar and then Calendar.

Once there, proceed to tap the space next to a specific date and time and a pop-up window will be prompted: Create a new entry. For efficiency, new courses are created along with new sessions, allowing you to kill two birds with one stone. 🐧🐦

On Subject, start typing the name to get a list of possible matches (sourced from the master list of subjects) and select the right option, like so:

Your choice of a subject will directly impact the second field, Course. If you picked a subject with existing courses, you'll be presented a list of them in order to pick one:

But if none apply, skip the dropdown menu and press Create a new course instead:

Alternatively, if previously you picked a subject with no existing courses, this will automatically launch the Create a new course area for you. Afterward, it's just a matter of filling in the details about the course (if applicable) and about the session at hand. ✍️

Beginning with the course-related fields, setting the Course starts on and Course ends on dates isn't required, but certainly advisable – likewise for appointing a Course name (which, if left blank, is populated with the start date by default). Earlier in the article we established how a course is essentially an intake defined by its time span, meaning that the same subject can have multiple courses, either running concurrently or successively. In view of this, stating the dates and giving out names lets everyone quickly tell the courses apart, for they're displayed on the sidebar of the calendar. As for the Course lecturers, they are the primary instructors responsible for most of the teaching duties across the course. 👩‍🏫

Here's an example of how a course appears on the calendar sidebar: subject code ("KDH022"), subject name ("Advanced Strategy"), custom course name ("Group A"), course start date ("11.12.19") and course end date ("11.01.20"):

In addition, when you open a course page (for instance, Details, Syllabus, Sessions, etc.), the full course name is always visible at the top. Have a look:

Now moving on to the session-related fields of creating a new entry, defining a Session name isn't compulsory, but nonetheless a nice touch, as it introduces the theme of the lecture right off the bat: e.g., "Leading Strategic Change", "Industry Positioning", "Uncertainty and Risk", and so on. Also valuable, for obvious reasons, is clarifying the Session location (i.e., where in the campus the session will take place), plus the Session starts on and Session ends on times (so that it's correctly scheduled in the timetable). Just remember: the more thorough you are here, the more information will be visible on the timetable at a glance. 🔎

Here's an example: session starts time ("14:00") and session ends time ("17:00"), subject code ("KDH022"), subject name ("Advanced Strategy"), custom course name ("Group A"), location ("22, building D") and session name ("Leading Strategic Change"):

Lastly, if a session happens to have a different main lecturer than usual or even a guest lecturer, you can also log that information in Session lecturers and Session guest lecturers, respectively. Lecturers aren't exhibited on the timetable though.

All of the aforementioned fields pertaining to courses are also available in the Details tab of a course, which is accessible by clicking a course on the sidebar, like so:

However, there's an additional field which is of crucial interest: Select which classes study this course. As the name suggests, that's where you input all of the classes that are supposed to share the same course, and, by extension, in which study plans said course is selected on. 📄

The biggest takeaway is this: the study plan updates the calendar, and the calendar updates the study plan, because they represent the same thing and are thus in sync:

Thence, if you were to add another subject to a class's study plan template or go into an existing subject, you'd automatically see its associated courses as specified in the field Select which classes study this course up to that point (if any had been defined, of course), under Courses.

This dynamic of the class field and the study plan being essentially the same is explained in detail here:

NOTE: Please disregard the current description of the Select which classes study this course, as it pertains to an older version of the calendar. We'll update it very soon.

You have reached the end of this article. Thanks for reading! 🤓 If you have any questions or comments on the topic at hand, or if you enjoy reads like this and have article requests, let us know. Also, please leave a rating below. Your feedback is highly appreciated! 💖

PUBLISHED: March 8, 2021
​LAST UPDATED: March 18, 2021 at 7:45 p.m.