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Course Recommendations through Online Course Requests

Karen McCue

We utilized the Online Course Requests for the 22-23 Academic Year but did not implement the Course Recommendation option. We are trying to determine if that is a piece we want to add for the upcoming Course Request Sign up period. There seems to be some resistance from our faculty and I am trying to determine if it is a worthwhile function. I would welcome any feedback as to the usefulness and if it was optional for faculty to make recommendations or required for each student they teach? Did it vary by department? Thank you!

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Comments

Brian Gray

@Karen McCue - We have used the Course Recommendations tool for two years in the Math Department and for one year in the Modern Languages department.

It works very well for us.

We have advanced level courses in both departments that have the Requires recommendation box checked (on the Course requests tab of the course record.)

If a course is marked as Requires recommendation, it does not appear on a student's list of courses to choose from unless the student was recommended. That filters out the accidental requests. In the case of a student who wants to take the advanced course but was not recommended, it forces discussions between the student and teacher to happen sooner.

Teachers only have to add a recommendation for students who can take the advanced course. (They can add a recommendation for other non-restricted courses too, but it's not required. Some math teachers will recommend an advanced math course and also recommend Computer Science.)

The scheduling manager can always add a student to a course - even without a teacher recommendation.

The only trick to using Course Recommendations is that the dates specified in the Course requests setup must include both the time that teachers make the recommendations and the time that students (and/or parents) submit the requests. To make this work, we change the permissions on the Student role to control when they can actually submit requests. (This is the official work-around for this. @Jacqueline Koca mentioned it in an online session last week.)

in Core > Security > Roles find the Student role and select Mange role from the 3-dots menu.
Select Tasks
Click Edit
In the Online Sign-up section, clear the Edit Requests box
Save

That allow teachers to make the recommendations, but prevents students from submitting requests. When it's time for students to make requests, repeat the process to check the box for Edit Requests. (When we get to the deadline for submission requests from students, we change the role permissions again to prevent late requests. That forces the student to talk to the person who builds the schedules.)

Adrian Skrentny

@Brian Gray @Karen McCue

This is exactly what we do as well. We mandate all teachers to do this so we have one place to search to see what the course recommendations are for each student. It is also helpful because the course recommendations list shows who made the recommendation along with a date/time - which helps to determine if it was a late recommendation for a course (and thus a student appealed the original decision and was approved). It helps us to have this trail and who to ask if there are questions.