Course naming with IPSIS & ILP
We are in the process of moving from Banner Real Time to IPSIS and have found what appears to be the biggest hurdle so far. The naming convention for course offerings and sections has changed. Neither the Course Offering Name nor Course Offering Code include the section number (CRN). This makes it impossible for instructors to tell which section they are entering if they teach multiple sections of the same course.
Have you encountered this? Do you have a solution?
Answers
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Hi Andy,
We don't use Banner, but we use IPSIS with Peoplesoft. Our info is sent over like this:
Course org unit code: 2019FallREG FREN10153 030
org unit (course offering) name: First Sem College French 030 (Blaylock)
Section org unit code: 2019FallREG FREN10153 S030
Section org unit name: 2019FallREG FREN10153 S030 First Sem College French 030 (Blaylock)
Our org unit codes are based on year (2019), term (Fall), session (REG), subject (FREN), course number (10153) , section (030)
The course offering title is based on course title (First Sem College French), section number (030)and instructor last name in parenthesis (Blaylock)
Hopefully this helps a little?
Kerrie
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It looks like the Peoplesoft integration lets you see the section or sequence info in the org unit code, which Banner apparently does not. Even if we couldn't see the section info in the name, having it in the code would help people know which section they were entering.
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Hi Andy, since the data is coming from ILP you may need to make adjustments in the SIS. The ILP set up in IPSIS does allow you to turn off updates to course name, this would allow you to manually edit the name in the LE and not have ILP overwrite it.
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Thanks for the suggestion @Reem Soliman , but we prefer that instructors don't change the name of the courses so that students have a consistent, reliable experience. Sadly, this appears to be the only option at this point since we're not able to modify the other fields in Banner.
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One followup note. Ellucian is suggesting that maybe ILP5 may be an option. We are investigating because we are still stuck with our current course naming scheme.
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We use Banner and ILP and the section number comes over in the name, but not the CRN. So the course I taught in the spring was this naming convention:
"Spring 2019 - GLB/US-Written Argument/Resrch (ENG-1302-29W) "
With the "29W" being the section number coming from Banner. Again, that's not the CRN but it doesn at least have an indicator for the instructor to discern different sections.
Is that what you are looking for?
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We've confirmed with Ellucian and D2L that ILP 5 allows for customization of the course name and course offering ID using a set of tokens (login required) that Ellucian has exposed for ILP. This is excellent news because it allows us to keep our course naming scheme the same as it was with BIC, and to customize the course offering ID in a way that helps with searching by CRN.
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Will the course templates allow for more than the subject abbreviation and course number? We need the campus or department code otherwise branding does not work when you have multiple university locations using the same subject and course.
Can cross listed course names include the course and section numbers when there are multiple sections in the association? Our users find it very confusing when the course name only uses one of the multiple sections.
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@Ruth Peters The documentation doesn't indicate that the tokens work on the course template level, but the integration should support anything that comes out of the SIS. How are those course templates identified in your SIS? With multiple codes? Otherwise you'd have to use the section/sequence info at the course offering level or section level to indicate which college.
You can manually name crosslistings to whatever you desire to address the name confusion. It's just more work.
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We have a script that creates the templates using the section data with a code of ssbsect_subj_code-ssbsect_crse_numb-ssbsect_campus_code. Our templates must be created under the corresponding university or the sections will not be branded with correct university's branding. The departments are manually entered and updated to make sure they are under the correct university/school. The sections all have departments so the parent relationship to the university is maintained for branding and role permission by university.
ILP creates a course offering for each section. When there is a cross listed group it creates a section by copying one of the sections in the group. The course offering is assigned a code of ssrxlst_xlst_group + ssbsect_term_code the cross listed section has the same code as the stand a lone section and the names are the same. This is very confusing to students because the course name may not have the course section or name they registered for. Example of a course offering name that includes three sections with different codes, the sections can have different subject codes:
2020 Spring - Jazz Ensemble MUEN-380-U15/MUEN-780-U15/MUEN-180-U15 There are course templates for each section MUEN-380-U, MUEN-780-U, and MUEN-180-U. The cross listed course offering uses the template of MUEN-180-U because that is the section it copied to create the cross listed course offering and section.
How are other customers handling branding for multiple locations and keeping templates separated between the sites?
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We did, hence why I wrote an entire server to handle this for me...... I couldn't sit around waiting on Elucian to get their acts together.... 10 years ago...
Basically, I just unmarashal the IMS 1.1 files, change the names, and remarshall them back to IMS 1.1.... but with that, I gain so much more control....
