Much preparation goes into opening and managing a new academic year or term, from ensuring that all of the elements that make up the class are created to fully enrolling a student. 🎓 To help you avoid the typical pitfalls of such an intricate but sporadic process, we came up with this article to sum up the steps you must execute, how and in which order. Read on for your own security. 😉

ℹ️ Disclaimer: The present article is most suitable for staff who are already familiar with this undertaking and merely need a memory aid.

➜ Part 1: Managing the Student Information System

・Create the required subjects

・Update the class's state

・Build a study plan template

・Create the courses and sessions for the class

・Create a transcript template

➜ Part 2: Transforming an applicant into a student

・Update the applicant's state

・Create a transcript for the student

・Register the student in the right courses

・Register the student in the appropriate sessions

Subjects are the foundation of a programme, as it's based on subjects that courses are created. Therefore, please review your school's list of subjects and, if any is missing, proceed to create it. To do so:

1) Click the gear at the top right-hand corner and choose General settings

2) Navigate to the tab Institution

3) Navigate to the tab Subjects

4) Click Add new subject on the top-right corner

5) Define a Code and Name for your subject and press Add subject

A class can have several states, representing where it currently is in its lifecycle. By default, the sequence is New → Applications open → Applications closed → Class in progress → Class done, and as a class is about to commence, it needs to be updated to the Class in progress state.

If the class in question was set to be automatically updated by the system in accordance with the Applications open on, Applications close on, Class starts on and Class ends on dates, simply ensure that these were correctly defined. Alternatively, if the class was set to be manually updated, then transition it to the Class in progress state before continuing.

To accomplish this, follow the below instructions:

1) Click the gear at the top right-hand corner and choose General settings

2) Navigate to the tab Institution

3) Enter one of the programmes inside the tab Programmes & Classes

4) Access the relevant class

5) Change the state to Class in progress

To review the aforementioned dates, in case the class is set to be updated automatically, just scroll down a bit:

A study plan is the range of core, elective and extracurricular subjects that compose the entirety of a degree programme. The moment a new class is created, a blank study plan template is automatically produced by the system, but you still need to add subjects to it. 🤽‍♂️ Please read this article to learn how.

Quoting from another article: "courses are the intakes of a subject; (…) the delivery of a subject in a particular timeframe spanning a few weeks or months". Meanwhile, sessions are the lectures of a course. Once the study plan is built, you're finally able to start creating courses and sessions. This article breaks down the process for you.

Transcript templates are .docx files created and formatted in Microsoft Word from which your students' transcripts are generated as documents. 📃 Although not particularly urgent, seeing as transcripts only need to be exported and sent towards the end of a class, it behooves you to check if your school already has an appropriate template or if a new one must be created.

To access your school's list of transcript templates:

1) Click the gear at the top right-hand corner and choose General settings

2) Navigate to Documents and then to Transcript templates

3) Press the gear at the end of whichever row belongs to the template you want to access

4) To download and inspect a template, tap the name of the file

For guidance on how to create a transcript template from scratch, please come here.

Whenever your school decides to admit an applicant, said applicant's lifecycle state must accordingly be updated to student::enrolled or an equivalent in order to accurately reflect their progress down the application funnel. More importantly, applicants must have a student role before it's possible to register them in any courses or sessions. 🚫

To update someone's lifecycle state:

1) Enter the respective profile

2) Refer to the sidebar on the right and scroll down until you find the class you want to enroll them in

3) Press the blue button with the current lifecycle state and pick the new one

Every student must have a transcript from the very beginning so that Full Fabric has a place where it can log their course registrations and respective performance in terms of grades, attendance and so on, which also doubles as an individual overview page for staff. Furthermore, transcripts can be used to register students into courses (more on that later).

To create a transcript:

1) Enter a profile

2) Refer to the sidebar on the right and scroll down until you find the class you want to create a transcript for

3) Under Transcript, click Click here in the phrase "Click here to create a transcript"

New transcripts automatically inherit the subjects in the class study plan. 🎁

As previously mentioned, courses are the intakes of a subject, so registering students in the specific courses that they're supposed to take is part of the admissions process.

There are two ways to do this: either through a student's academic transcript, or through the calendar. The first method is explained here. As for the second one:

1) Press Academics on the sidebar and then Calendar to open the calendar

2) Open the pertinent course

3) Switch to the tab Register

4) Click REGISTER STUDENTS on the upper-right corner to trigger the registration modal

5) Click REGISTER next to the students you want to register to complete the operation

By default, all of the registrants of a course are automatically added to the sessions of that course as participants, unless indicated otherwise. More concretely, the only time you have to manually register a student into a session is if you if wish to exclude someone from it, in which case you're required to select the participants. That's done in the Details tab of a session:

If all of the registrants are participants, then leave the Participants field empty and don't bother with this. 😎

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! 💖
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PUBLISHED: October 29, 2021
​LAST UPDATED: June 27, 2022 at 10:01 a.m.