Course Offering Detail

The Offering Maintenance forms are used to set up term offerings. Typically, these courses are extracted from the Course Master or copied from previous terms. Continuous information, or information that does not change from term to term, is held in Master Courses and is generally inserted there first, then copied to the Course Offering level. This procedure will maintain unity between the two groups and avoid updating problems that might occur should a new catalog be required.

The first section of the field descriptions below deals primarily with information that tends to remain constant from term to term. The second section deals with tuition and fees assessment as well as course enrollment. The last section determines how the course will appear on transcripts and the impact it will have regarding institutional policy such as repeating of the course, variable credit course, hour values, etc.

Fields that identify the course and typically remain constant from term to term:

Access Campus - Campus on which course is offered (Campuses reference table).
Course ID - Alphanumeric field; users could enter a value such as "101" for Eng 101.
Course Type - The presentation method of the course. For example, lecture (LEC), laboratory (LAB).
Course Division - Each content division into which your institution might divide (for example, Liberal Arts, Medicine, etc). (Offering Division glossary table).
Course Name - Name for the course.
Section - Discrete values used to distinguish multiple instances of the same course.

NOTE: The "Section" field is used to differentiate multiple occurrences of the same course during a given term. This field should NOT be used to define different courses. With that in mind, a student can not be enrolled for the same course, different sections, at the same time. At the time of registration, CAMS will look at the Course ID, Type, and Course Name and thus will not let the registration of such occur more than once within the same term.

Department - Any content area into which a division is subdivided; for example, [Division] Liberal Arts contains [Departments] [Engl]ish, [Phil]osophy, etc. A free field with maximum of four characters.
Flexible Schedule - Used to schedule non-traditional scheduling for a course.
Req. Faculty Approval - Select if the faculty instructing this course should approve the registration. Students will not be able to register this course from the Student Portal.
Display in Portal - Select Display in Portal for this course to show in Course Offering and Registration on the Student and Faculty Portals.
Allow Withdraw in Portal - Remove the check next to Allow Withdraw in Portal if students or advisors should not be allowed to withdraw this course from Official Registration the portals. Withdrawal from a course is only allowed in Official Registration in both CAMS and the Portals.
Allow Drop in Portal - Remove the check next to Allow Drop in Portal if students or advisors should not be allowed to drop this course from the portals. See Refund Group Setup to enter dates for Last Drop and Last Withdrawal.

NOTE: Only Standard Plus Refund Policy will allow an Official course to be dropped or withdrawn in the Portals depending on the dates set for each in the Standard Plus Refund Policy. For all other Refund Policies, Official courses may only be withdrawn in the Portals. Unofficially registered courses may not be withdrawn and may only be dropped when using any Refund Policy.

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.

Fields affecting fees, enrollment counts, etc:

Cost Center - Determines, in combination with the registering student's cost type, the tuition to be charged for this course (Cost Center reference table).
Hourly Course Fee - Defined at the master and course offering levels; they flow through TransDocs that are reserved for these types of charges (defined in Cost Center Reference table).
Minimum Enrollment - Identify the minimum enrollment for this course.
Refund Schedule - This value, along with the registering student's Refund Type in the Student Status record, determine the manner in which refunds will be calculated for this course (Refund Groups glossary table).
Official Enrollment - This field is automatically populated as a result of the official registration process or authorization and reflects the count of officially registered students for this class.
Maximum Enrollment - Identify the maximum enrollment for this course. This value will be used at time of registration, comparing the actual enrollment count (official and unofficial) with the limit to determine whether or not the class is full.
Lab Fee - Defined at the master and course offering levels; they flow through the TransDocs that are reserved for these types of charges (defined in Cost Center Reference table).
Unofficial Enrollment - This field is automatically populated as a result of the unofficial registration process and reflects the count of unofficially registered students for this class.

Click these links for more detail on Cost Centers and Tuition Refunds.

Fields that define impact of course in academic calculations based on institutional policy:

Credits - Supply the number of credit hours for this course. Credits are used as course hours in Faculty Load calculations.
Lab Hours - If applicable, identify the number of lab hours for this course.
Variable Credit/Independent Studies - A value of Yes displays a dialog box during registration for a class that allows variable credit, at which point you will identify the number of credits for this course for the registering student.
Clock Hours - If using clock hours, provide a value in this field.

Note for South African schools: Only Clock Hours are used for Faculty Load calculations.

Can Repeat - A value of Yes allows a student to repeat this course without affecting the previous grade given to that student for this course. Thus each time the course is taken, it will count toward GPA calculations.
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.
Lecture Hours - The number of lecture hours per week the course requires.
GPA Grouping - Transcript grouping into which the course, its credits, and grade will be combined (e.g., Undergraduate, Masters, etc). Used in order to distinguish between grade point systems for various college groups.

Note: If the GPA Grouping is set on the student’s status record that setting will overwrite the setting in the offering when the student is registered.

Show Course in Transcript - A value of Yes indicates the course (and its grade and computation) will appear on the transcript.
Show on Grade Card - A value of Yes indicates the course (and its grade and computation) will appear on the student’s grade card.
Weight Factor for Load - This is used for informational purposes only and does NOT play a role in the calculation of Faculty Load. Course Weight in the Faculty Schedule is used for factoring Faculty Load.

Other Fields:

Status - Open, Cancelled, Closed. (Glossary: Offering Status) If you have copied the Offering from another term, this entry will default to “Open”. Courses with such statuses as “Cancelled” or “Closed” will be set to “Open” in the new term. Cancelled and Closed courses will not display in CAMS or Portal Registration and will not display in Portals Course Offering.
Course URL - Web address dedicated to the course. Course URL is for reference only and is viewable only from the course detail.
Eval Form - If students are required to complete an online course evaluation before they can view their final grade an evaluation must be associated with the course. Click Eval Form to add a predefined course evaluation form. See Course Evaluation for set up information.
Location - is on Page 2 detail and is used to set a value for students to determine where they are taking their courses and report historical information via custom reports. Locations are set up in CAMS Manager >Lookup Table Options >Location Lookup > Location Setup.
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.
Grade By Exam ID - When checked, students are identified by an ExamID when users are grading assignments. If this is checked, the ExamIDs must be generated from Tools >Processes >Registration >Generate Exam IDs.
Place a check next to DL Course if this course may not be registered from the Student Portal until a DL Orientation Course has been completed in a prior term. Orientation courses are indicated by selecting DL Orientation Course check box in Master Course detail.
Page 3 fields Instruction Mode, Course Type, Course Subject, and Course Mode are utilized in various State reporting requirements and are set up in CAMS Manager >Lookup Table Options >State Reports Lookup.