Changing course lengths for next year

Nathan Ong
Nathan Ong
Third Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K–12 Education Solutions™ General Discussions

Hi,

I see that course lengths are locked after they are offered--we will be switching up the school terms from quarters (a whole year course = 4 terms in length) to semesters (whole year = 2 terms).

Would I need to recreate each class with different length? Or for the next year could the lengths on each just be edited (this is our first year on BB so not sure if it would be open to edit for a new year).

Thanks!

Comments

  • Brian Gray
    Brian Gray Community All-Star
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Nathan Ong:

    Would I need to recreate each class with different length? Or for the next year could the lengths on each just be edited

    You will have to create new course records with the new course length. The length value is locked when the course is offered, but it does not “unlock” for each academic year.

    As you create the new course records, I suggest that you temporarily modify the course name in some way to make it clear which record you’re looking at. (If you have a course named English 9, temporarily name the new course *English 9 or English 9 - Semesters.)

    It's OK to have multiple courses with the same course code. That is, both the current English 9 and the 2-semester version can have course code 209.

    As you transition from this year to next year, you can make the 4-term version of each course inactive and then change the names of the 2-semester courses.

  • John Ronan
    John Ronan
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    Nathan, Brian pretty much covers it here.

    One thing I might consider is:

    If you're going to reuse course IDs, you may want to adopt a convention to distinguish the new [Semester] courses from the old ones.

    e.g. if you are reusing 209 for English, call the new one “209s” or “209_”….at least temporarily until you settle into next year.

    You can remove the “S” or “_” later, when the dust settles and you've safely archived [inactivated] the old courses.

  • Nathan Ong
    Nathan Ong
    Third Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Brian Gray Understood, thank you for your reply!

  • Liz King
    Liz King
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 2 K-12 Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge Name Dropper

    @Nathan Ong Great suggestions from John and Brian. When we moved to all new grade plan groups, we capitalized all of our new course titles so we could distinguish the new courses from the old ones.

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