Course Data Structure

Contents

1 COURSE DATA STRUCTURE

COURSE DATA STRUCTURE

SEMESTER

A Semester is the basic academic calendar division for Washington University and is the basis for how much of WUCRSL is structured. The timing of many production tasks is governed by the flow of the semester. There are five officially defined semesters in SIS:

  • JI – January Intersession
  • SP – Spring
  • SU – Summer
  • YR – Year (runs June 1 – May 31)
  • FL – Fall

Semesters are displayed in two ways:

  • The Display Semester has a two character prefix (JI, SP, SU, YR, FL) followed by a four character year. An example is FL2017, which can be read as ‘Fall 2017’.
  • A Sort Semester starts with the 4 character year. It is followed by a 2 digit semester code from the following list:
    • JI – 01
    • SP – 02
    • SU – 03
    • YR – 04
    • FL – 05

For example, ‘201805’ would be read as Fall 2018. 201902 would be read as Spring 2019.

DEPARTMENT

A Department is an organizational unit within the University’s various Schools. Departments generally focus on a particular academic discipline, e.g. Philosophy or Computer Science.

DEPARTMENT CODE

A Department Code is a 3 character code that is used to specify an academic program. It is made up of two parts:

  • School code: 1 character representing the school to which a department belongs (e.g. B for Business, L for Arts & Sciences, E for Engineering, etc.)
  • Program code: a two digit number representing each program/department (e.g. 50 representing Accounting, 33 representing Psychology and 81 representing Computer Science and Engineering).

When you combine the school code and program code from the examples above you end up with department codes of B50, L33 and E81.

COURSE VS. SECTION

  • Course: a class offered on a particular subject, identified with a course title and course number. A course number may be 3 or 4 characters, usually containing numbers only. However, a course number may include up to one letter.
  • Section: the meeting pattern of a course. A course may have multiple sections (multiple meeting patterns). A section is a two digit numeric code, starting with 01.

SECTION VS. SUB-SECTION

  • Section: A method of instruction, often a lecture, where a group of students meet together with an instructor (or instructors) to complete the requirements of a course.
  • Sub-Section:
  • Sub-sections include laboratory, recitation and discussion groups that are supplementary and are scheduled to meet separately from the section/lecture portion of the course. A sub-section is identified with a letter (e.g. A, B, C). Sub-section types include:
    • Laboratory
    • Discussion
    • Sub-Section
    • 4-Week, 6-Week (used by the Medical school)

SESSION/SUB-SEMESTER

A Sub-Semester is used to indicate a period of time that is shorter than the regular Semester, but is still part of a Semester. The Sub-Semester term is used in WUCRSL, but in SISAdmin they’re called Sessions.

Sessions and session dates is maintained in SISAdmin

  • Functions>Admin Utilities>Sessions (table used for creating sessions)
  • Functions>Admin Utilities>Session Controls (semester based table used to assign dates and registration controls to sessions.
  • The sessions and session dates are pulled from SIS into WUCRSL.

COURSE STRUCTURE FOR EACH SEMESTER

  • Curriculum
    • Contains all active courses which have been approved by a school and/or department, regardless of whether or not they are taught in a current semester.
  • Semester
    • Includes course records only for those courses actually offered in a given semester.
  • Section
    • Contains detail records with information on each individual section, lab, sub-section, and/or discussion group for all courses offered in a given semester. At this level, class meeting days & times, building & room location, and teaching instructor data are maintained.
    • Enrollment management functions are set by section, including the enrollment limit, and waitlisting options.

HOMES AND IDENTS

A course may be either a “Home” course or an “Ident” (i.e. identical), aka “crosslisted” course.

  • A Home course is a course that is created, maintained and “owned” by one academic department (aka the “home” department). The home department is primarily responsible for the decision making and logistical support for the course and instructor.
  • An Ident is the exact same course as the Home (i.e. same instructor, same class time, etc.), but is simply being offered to students through another department for purposes of registering under a different department and course number. This can be helpful to students who might want their transcripts to reflect course numbers that are more relevant to their area(s) of study.
  • Home courses may have multiple Idents, but an Ident course can only be associated with one Home course.
  • A Home course has one or more sections attached to it. An Ident (or crosslisted) course does not have its own sections, but rather shares section of the Home course.

FULL COURSE NUMBER

A course number is generally considered to be the combination of the department code, course number and section/sub-section number. Examples include:

  • L33 100B 01 (L=Arts & Sciences, 33=Psychology, 100B=course number, 01=section)
  • E81 131 A (E=Engineering, 81=Computer Science, 131=course number, A=laboratory)

COURSE KEY

Refers to a set of descriptors used to uniquely specify a course or section. The Course List data structure uses a series of related fields as the Primary Key for courses and sections. These related fields are then used in other tables essentially as a Foreign Key whenever courses or sections need to be specified. The semester and department short name are critical parts of the Course Key, and so are referenced anytime a Course or Section is referenced. Example: FL2018.L77.WGSS.100B.01