Overview
The Course Approval tool provides a fully electronic course approval process focused on approving specific courses for a student’s study abroad experience and send them to your Partner Institution via Nominations. From the Modern Application Page, an applicant can select their desired foreign courses to take at a partner institution, indicate the home course equivalents as known, select an Approver, and submit an electronic Course Approval form. Each Approver receives an email notification containing a link to view, amend, and confirm a status (i.e. approve or deny) for each respective Course Approval request. This status update is noted within the software, triggering an email alert to the applicant that the Course Approval process has been completed.
Discover more about this paperless, streamlined process below.
Important Note:
- The makeover to CER functionality is just getting started, and Course Approval is only phase one of this process. Course Approval will continue to evolve as the multi-phase redesign process of CER functionality continues. Stay tuned!
- The Course Approval tool is currently only available on client sandbox sites in a beta, or test, format. We look forward to reviewing client feedback via the Terra Dotta Agreements 19.3 Feedback Form. Your suggestions will help shape the Course Approval redesign process prior to a scheduled release to production sites in 2020.
- The Modern Applicant Experience must be enabled on your site in order to use Course Approval. To enable this feature, navigate to Settings > System Features > Interface Settings. Check the "enable" box next to Modern Applicant User Experience. Click "Update" to preserve your changes.
- The Course Approval tab does appear in the same interface as some features of the Admin Console. Learn more about the Admin Console The Admin Console.
This article covers the following topics related to Course Approval:
- Foreign & Home Courses
- Creating & Submitting a Course Approval Request
- Approving a Course Approval Request
- Creating a Department Listing
Foreign & Home Courses
The Course Approval process incorporates both foreign and home courses.
Foreign Courses
A foreign course is that which is offered at a partner institution. Often, the partner institution will provide a list to the home institution which specifies their (foreign) courses offered as part of a program. Thus, foreign courses are tied to the program to which an applicant applies. An administrator can input foreign course information into their Terra Dotta site so that an applicant can easily search for a foreign course when completing a Course Approval Form online.
To add foreign courses to your site, see the CER: How to Build a Foreign Course Catalog Knowledgebase (KB) article.
Home Courses
A home course is that which is offered at an applicant's home institution. As part of the Course Approval process, an applicant can choose a home course to serve as an equivalent to the selected foreign course. An administrator can elect to load their Terra Dotta site with pre-approved home course selections or leave it to the applicant to manually enter the home course.
To add home courses to your site, see the CER: How to Build and Edit a Home Course Catalog KB article.
Creating & Submitting a Course Approval Request
An applicant can access the Course Approval feature directly from the Modern Application Page after creating an application for a program of interest. The application does not have to be approved in order for the applicant to access the Course Approval Form.
From the Modern Application Page, the applicant will see a "Course Approval" tab. Clicking on this tab will prompt a "Course Approval Instructions" window to appear, placing important instructions directly before the applicant. The applicant can read this text and close the window to access the Course Approval page. Instructions can always be accessed again by clicking on the "i" circle icon on the Course Approval Form.
Note: The "Course Approval" tab currently appears on an application regardless of the application phase. Future feature enhancements include giving the admin the ability to determine when this tab should appear.
The Course Approval page is divided into two main sections:
- The Course Approval Form (top half of page) .
- The Course Approval Requests (bottom half of page).
The Course Approval Form
The electronic Course Approval Form appears to applicants as it would to an admin user from their respective Terra Dotta site interface. The Course Approval Form is divided into two sections: Foreign Course and Course Approval.
1) Foreign Course
An applicant can search and select a foreign course from within this section of the Course Approval Form, organized as follows:
- Search for Foreign Course: Click into this field to search the register of available foreign courses for a respective program.
- Code: A course code, such as "Econ 100", auto-populates once a foreign course has been selected by the applicant.
- Description: Available space to provide a course description
- URL: Available space to provide a URL to a course catalog.
- Drop Syllabus/Browse: Upload a course syllabus by dragging/dropping the file or browsing.
2) Course Approval
An applicant can search for or manually enter a desired home course in this section of the Course Approval Form, organized as follows:
- Home Course: Use a drop-down menu to search and select a home course equivalent, if known, of the foreign course selected.
- Search for Department: Locate/select a department in lieu of selecting a home course if the appropriate home course is unknown to the applicant. Departments are set up via the Staff > Organization Management feature.
- Credit Type: A drop-down menu gives the option to choose what type of credit to receive for the course (i.e. Major, Minor, General Elective, Language Credit, or Unknown). Future enhancements will give admins the option to configure the credit type options they want displayed.
- Search for Approver: Locate/select the faculty/staff member who will receive email notification to view and make a decision on this specific course approval request. Only one Approver per each course approval request may be selected.
- Comment: Ability for an applicant to leave notes for the Approver.
Once finished with completing the Course Approval Form for one request, the applicant should click "Add to List" at the bottom of the form. This will move the request down to the Course Approval Requests section of the page. The applicant can then continue with creating additional Course Approval requests before hitting "Submit" to send out the email notifications to the respective Approver(s).
Course Approval Requests
The Course Approval Requests panel rests at the bottom of the Course Approval page. Information is organized into columns in an easy to read display panel that highlights the requested foreign course, department, credit type, home course equivalent, Approver, and request status. In the example below, we see two requests. The first has been approved. The second is in "draft" status, which means the applicant has not yet hit "Submit". The option to delete the request is available. Once the request is submitted, its status will change to "pending"
Approving a Course Approval Request
When a Course Approval Request is submitted, an email notification is automatically sent to the Approver via Terra Dotta software (TDS). The email contains a link, providing direct access to view and take action on the the Course Approval Request without the need to log into your site or sign a hard-copy document. An Approver with login credentials can also view their Course Approval Requests by navigating to Applicants > Credit Equivalency Requests > Course Approval Requests. A comprehensive digest of Course Approval Requests, including those in pending, rejected, approved status, will appear. Navigate through requests easily using the paginated search results tool or available search filters.
Once you've located a pending request to take action on, click on the expansion arrows to the right of the row to view the full request, organized into three panels: "Details", "Comments History Log", and "Related Course Approval". Admins will spend most of their time in the "Details" tab to review and take action on a request. Information in this tab is laid out as follows:
- Application: Information about the student and the program to which they've applied.
- Course Approval: This is the information provided by the student. From here, an admin can make any necessary updates.
- Comments: An additional space for Approvers to add request-related notes.
When an Approver is ready to make a decision on the request, they can choose to click "Approve" or "Reject" accordingly. This action will trigger an email notification to the student with a status update of their Course Approval Request.
Note:
- The Approver can enter equivalent home credits, change the credit type, and add additional comments in the Course Approval Requests section for requests to which they've been asked to review and make a decision.
- An Approver only has the ability to approve courses that they have explicitly been assigned to review by an applicant. However, an Approver is able to view all other Course Approval Requests that the applicant has made. This additional context helps to provide the Approver with a more complete scope of what coursework is of interest to the applicant, etc.
- An applicant is able to view when a decision has been made on a Course Approval Request.
- An admin user can access a Course Approval Form by navigating to the Admin Console > Application Finder > View Full Application (click the icon of the desired application) > "Course Approval" tab.
Creating a Department Listing
Department listings on a Course Approval Form are set up via Organization Management. Navigate to Staff > Organizational Management to access this feature. From one interface, you are able align a College, Department, People, and Courses to a Department. Get started by setting up a college from the "Colleges" tab. Next, move to the "Departments" tab where you can set up departments and department members.
This feature is part of the multi-phase redesign of the CER functionality and will continue to be enhanced during this process. Keep sharing your feedback with us!