crsf1441

Maintain Course Pattern of Study - CRSF1441

Purpose	To allow the recording of patterns of study against course offerings
Subsystem	Course Structure & Planning
Structure	Two Blocks	Course Offering Pattern of Study
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This form is accessed in context from CRSF1300 or directly from a menu.

A pattern of study defines the predetermined unit structure which students enrolled in the course would typically follow. Patterns of study are used in the pre-enrolment process to pre-enrol students in units and to advise students of unspecified unit requirements such as electives and optional units, making the selection of units by a student more straightforward.

Not all courses lend themselves to the use of patterns of study. Courses with no or few prescribed units are in this category. Some courses have a group of compulsory (core) units, with the rest of the course made up of optional and elective units. In these cases the choice may be to include only the prescribed units in the pattern of study (but optional and elective units could be listed as unspecified units.). The decision on creating patterns of study for particular courses will be based on the perceived advantage of doing so. If the course has only a small number of prescribed units, patterns of study are unlikely to provide much advantage.

A pattern of study can be specified to apply to one or more academic periods in advance. This permits a student's pre-enrolment to be performed for either the upcoming academic year or any number of academic years. For example, by specifying a value for Number of Periods of 1, pre-enrolment will only take place one year in advance. For each academic year covered by the pattern of study, the teaching periods in which pre-enrolment should take place are specified (using form CRSF1442) and the units to be pre-enrolled in the teaching periods are recorded (also in CRSF1442).

A single pattern of study can apply to all offerings of a course, or different patterns of study can apply to different offerings. Most 'majors' or 'streams' have different unit requirements (unit sets) and hence different patterns of study, and a particular course may have different patterns of study depending on the admission periods to which it is related.

For example:

Students studying on-campus may be offered a different pattern of units to those studying off-campus. (Fulltime on-campus students might normally do X units spread over Y teaching periods, whereas part-time on-campus and off-campus students might do the same X units but over 2Y teaching periods.) This would be reflected in different patterns of study and hence different set of units being pre-enrolled.

Students taking different 'majors' have different unit requirements (unit sets) to satisfy their major. The unit requirements can be specified as a pattern of study.

Beginning of year and mid year intakes will have the same units in their patterns of study, but the pattern will be different because one starts in SEM-1 and the other in SEM-2

Recording Patterns of Study for a Course Offering

Perform a query to retrieve the required course offering.

Record details of each pattern of study.

The number of periods refers to the number of academic periods in which students are pre-enrolled each time the pre-enrolment process is run. For example, specifying 2 would mean that the pre-enrolment process would pre-enrol units in both the upcoming academic year and the following year. (unless the upcoming period is the final period of the student's course)

Location Code, Attendance Mode, Attendance Type, Admission Calendar, Unit Set Code and Admission Category are all optional fields which serve to restrict the applicability of a particular pattern of study. For example, specifying a location G (Geelong campus) would limit applicability of the pattern of study to enrolments in the offerings of the course at that location only. There would be no restriction on attendance mode, attendance type etc. if none of these attributes were set for that same record. Admission Calendar is used to limit the pattern of study to a particular admission period. This could apply where students in a mid-year intake are offered a different pattern of units to those in the earlier intake. A Unit Set Code is specified where the pattern is restricted to students in that unit set, for example students studying a particular 'major' sequence. Specifying an admission category restricts the pattern of study to students in that admission category.

It is recommended that for every course offering a default pattern of study be set up as well as (or instead of) the restricted patterns mentioned above. This would ensure that no course offerings have been overlooked. A default pattern is set up by creating a record with only the number of periods specified. The default pattern is used by the pre-enrolment process in cases where attributes of the student's course offering option do not match the same attributes of any of the restricted patterns of study.

The Always Pre Enrol checkbox, when selected, permits pre-enrolment of the units in the pattern of study to always take place. The exceptions to this are discussed in Pre-enrolment Constraints. If deselected, pre-enrolment for particular students only occurs where the student enrolled in and passed the previous academic periods' units. (I.e. the student must have progressed exactly as prescribed by the pattern of study.)

Latest Approved Acad Cal Instance (including the start and end date fields) is the last academic period for which the pattern is applicable. This can be amended if the pattern is to be used for later academic periods.

For each pattern of study, the units to be pre-enrolled in each teaching period must be recorded in CRSF1442. Select the Pattern of Study Period button to access this form in context.

Rules/Notes:

If a value is specified for any of the optional attributes of a pattern of study (location, attendance mode, attendance type, admission cal, unit set, admission category), then a value must be specified for that attribute in all other patterns of study for the course offering, unless it is a NULL (default) pattern of study. E.g. if a location is specified for a pattern of study, then all other non-default patterns of study must also have location specified

Callista prevents specification of a value for any of the optional attributes of a pattern of study if a value has not been specified for that attribute, for any other of the course's patterns of study (other than the default pattern of study).

Callista warns if no matching future course offering options are found for the specified location &/or attendance mode &/or attendance type of the pattern of study. (E.g. If Geelong is specified as the location of a pattern of study, the System warns if there are no future Geelong offerings of the course). If no offering option attributes are specified, and no future offerings of the course are found, a warning is also given.

Callista warns if a unit set specified against the pattern of study is not linked to the course offering.

Pattern of Study - By Cohort

The use of the cohort tab, allows you to define a pattern of study to be applied based upon a chort rule, ie when a user only wants this pattern to apply to students whos surname starts with L.

It allows users to either use the attributes (as previously defined) or a rule to test against. The ranking determines which rules are tested first (rules may not be unique, in that a student may satisfy many rules).

A Cohort Code can be selected from the LOV.

Rapid Entry of Pattern of Study Data (Copying Pattern of Study Detail)

A facility is provided to enable the details of one pattern of study to be copied to a new pattern of study, reducing data entry effort.

With the new pattern of study selected, select the Copy POS Detail button to initiate the process.

In the displayed overlay, select the pattern of study from which the detail is to be copied. The course code LOV displays all available patterns of study. The Academic Period-First and Last fields allow the details copied to be restricted to details for specific academic periods. For example, it is possible to copy details for the second year of a course only.

Alter the academic period - first and last fields as required.

Select the Continue button. Various validations are performed during the copying process. These produce detailed self explanatory messages which should be noted. Where possible, details are copied to the new pattern of study. These can be checked by following the Pattern of Study Period button to CRSF1442.

Updated 28 November 2002