Related Topics
Master Courses represent your entire curriculum of course offerings—independent of term. Courses are first defined in the master listing and then copied to the term offerings (the actual course for which the student registers).
Master course listings contain all information about a course that is generally constant—e.g., Department, Name, Credit Hours, Lab Hours. A number of operational definitions are also included such as GPA Grouping, Course Weight, Passing Grade, and others.
Master Courses form the complete course listing and can also be used to create a CAMS Catalog. The term, Catalog, is used by Unit4 Education Solutions to indicate a historical copy of the master. Whenever you change the Master substantially, you will first copy the older listing as a Catalog and then make your changes to the Master. Should your changes involve the deletion of courses, then that catalog can be helpful should students require historical information about classes they have taken that have since been dropped from the college.
The Master Courses form is also used to add Pre-requisites and Co-requisites to a course, as well as to identify Course Equivalents and set Allowed Grades.
Note: The main screen contains two data grids, the upper grid, which displays all the courses, and the lower grid, which displays other master courses that the selected course is a pre-requisite of. It can be used to quickly find which classes need to be updated with a newer pre-requisite. The lower data grid is informational only. The delete button will only delete the selected course in the upper data grid. A Master Course cannot be deleted if it is linked to a student’s Transfer course, an Offering course where students have registered, or is used in co-requisite or pre-requisite formulas.
To create a new Master Course:
Note: No duplicate courses may be entered into CAMS Master Courses, whether by adding a new course or modifying an existing course. CAMS will not save a course that has the same Department, Course Number, and Course Type as another course already in the Course Master table. If you enter duplicate Department, Course Number, and Course Type, and then click the Add/Update button, the following message displays: "A course with the same Department, Course Number, and Course Type already exists. Cannot have duplicated courses in the Master Listing". If you get this message, you can change any of the Department, Course Number, and Course Type fields, and then save, or you can click Cancel to exit the window.
Field Descriptions
Information on the fields appearing on this screen is listed below. For drop-down fields utilizing glossary and reference tables, the tables are identified.
Course Division - Glossary: Offering Division.
Unique ID - Numeric value that CAMS supplies. Users cannot change this field.
Require Approval - Check this field if student must have faculty/instructor/advisor approval to take course. When you register a student for this course, a prompt will display asking if the student received the necessary approval. If yes is selected in the prompt, you may continue with the registration of that course. If no is selected in the prompt, CAMS will not allow registration of that course.
Active - Must be selected for the course to display for selection when setting up Course Offering, Degree Audit, etc. Obsolete courses can be unchecked and will filter the selection lists to only active courses.
Course Name - Proper Name for the Course as used on campus.
Note: The Course Name field may also be populated with non-Latin characters, such as Arabic.
Department - Name for the department in which the course falls. Typically an abbreviation such as ACC,
Course Number - Alpha/numeric field with a maximum of five characters.
Course Type - Indicate the type of course this is, such as Lec (for lecture), Lab, etc.
Credits - Number of credits associated with this course.
Hourly Course Fee - Any fee charged for this specific course; will be multiplied times the number of credit hours to produce the final charge (see Hourly Fee category in Registration Setup).
Lab Fee - Any lab fee associated with this course.
SAP Total Hours must be checked for the course to count towards Program Length Percentage calculations in the SAP Status Change process located at Tools >Processes >Registration >SAP.
Grade Catalog - This field will only display if "Allow Course Grade Catalog" is enabled in CAMS Configuration. Select a Grade Catalog to allow a specific course to have its own grade catalog so that course can receive grades that are different than what is assigned to the student in the Student Status Grade Catalog. Grades for this course will be calculated into the overall grade as set in the selected grade catalog for the course.
Note: Only select a specific Grade Catalog for a course if that course's Grade Catalog should be different than the student's default Grade Catalog.
Exclude Repeat Charge - exclude this course from any Repeat Hourly charges that have been set in Tuition and Refunds Setup.
Lecture Hours - From the total number of contact hours in the course, how many are lecture?
Lab Hours - From the total number of contact hours in the course, how many are lab?
Contact Hours - Total of lecture and lab hours.
Passing Grade - The lowest grade for this course to be considered passing.
GPA Grouping - (GPA Grouping Reference Table) The transcript category into which this course will be grouped both for grade criteria and course inclusion.
Course Weight - Indicate the weighting of the class. The value entered here will be multiplied by the number of students in the class.
Can Repeat - Whether or not a student can repeat the course without affecting the grade earned in a prior sitting. If Yes is selected, all grades received for attempts at this course will be counted in grade calculations.
Show Grade Report - Determine whether or not the course and grade will show on the grade report.
Show Transcript - Determine whether course information (including grade) will show on transcript.
Grouping - User defined free form field to further categorize courses.
CIP Code - Enter the appropriate CIP (Classification of Instructional Programs) code. The
Writing Intensive and Honors - While these fields don't appear on default CAMS transcripts, you can customize the transcripts to include these fields, which will display when checked on this screen.
Display in Portals - Displays this course in the Faculty Portals Master Courses link.
Max Credits - Used in Degree Audit, this is the maximum number of credits for which this course can count toward a group's requirements when Summarize is selected. Such courses would be those that are taken more than once like Band or Choir.
DL Orientation Course - Used to designate an orientation course that must be completed before students can register (from the Student Portal) for any course marked in Offering Maintenance as a DL Course. This must ONLY be checked for orientation courses and not for the DL Courses themselves. DL Courses that may not be registered until completing the orientation course must be indicated in Offering Maintenance by selecting the DL Course check box.
Course Description - More extensive description of the course being offered. Example: Enter the information used in course catalogs to describe the course to registering students, or store syllabus information.
Course URL - Web address dedicated to the course. Course URL is for reference only and is viewable only from the course detail.
Co-Requisite Of - Automatically populated value indicating whether the course is a co-requisite for other courses (corresponding course is found in the Co-Requisites tab).
Equivalent Of - Automatically populated value indicating whether this course is equivalent to another (corresponding course is found in the Equivalents tab).
Note: In Course Name, Department, Course Number and Course Type you cannot use a period as part of the entry. CAMS Enterprise uses the period to separate these fields when using the quick registration entry field. You can use a hyphen.