Classes and Courses, What's the Difference?

Site Builder also offers a Class content type. Refer to its documentation for a detailed explanation on how it differs from Course.

Course Catalog vs Courses by Term

This content typeA collection of fields that describe a specific type of content, like a news article, a person, or an event. Site admins can add additional content types by enabling optional modules. WDS can also create custom content types for a site. is used to store imported courses from a specific term (like what the Registrar Course Offerings website displays), which can then be displayed using the Course Offerings by Term List block. If you are interested in displaying courses from the course catalog (the same list of courses that the Undergraduate Announcement and Graduate School websites display), you do not need this content type and you do not need to import courses. Simply add the Course Catalog List Block to a page and configure it.

Configuring the Courses Module

After enabling the Courses Module, users with the role Site Admin can control some options. If you need to go back to see or change the options:

1. Go to Manage » Configuration » System » Modules
2. Click the Settings button for Courses
3. Make any necessary changes and click Save

Using this settings form, Site Admins can:

• Indicate if newly imported courses should be published or not. This can be useful if you want a chance to categorize or enhance imported courses before making them available to view.
• Control how instructors are displayed on the course detail page. Instructors are imported into the Course Instructor taxonomy vocabularyUsed primarily for categorizing content, a vocabulary defines a specific grouping of taxonomy terms. Some default vocabularies exist on all sites, but WDS can create custom vocabularies if needed. Synonymous with categories. . After importing Instructors, you can add an external website or, using the PUID field in the Person content type, associate them with faculty members’ pages on your website.
• Control how the various taxonomy vocabularies are displayed on the event detail page.
• Disable all course detail pages and prevent them from appearing in search results. Note that course list blocks may still be configured to link the detail pages, but visitors will see a 404 Not Found page when clicking them. You should configure these list blocks to not link.

Importing Courses

Unlike most other content types, courses are not manually added to your site. Instead, they are imported. This ensures that the course data displayed throughout the University remains consistent and accurate for each course.

1. Go to Manage » Content
2. Select the Courses tab
3. Choose Term, Subject, Track options (see details below)
4. Click Apply
5. Click Import Courses
6. After the courses have imported, you can then show them in Blocks. See the Course Offerings List Block instructions.

Importing Courses by Subject

For departments that are associated with one or a few subjects, the easiest way to display them on your site is to use the "Import Courses by Subject" form to import all courses (including crosslistings) for each subject.

After one or more subject has been imported, they will be automatically tracked for future updates. This means that:

• Any new courses that the Registrar adds for the same term will be automatically imported (e.g. a late addition course).
• When a new term of courses is released by the Registrar, they will be automatically imported.

You can stop this process from occurring if you'd like by pressing the "Stop auto-import" button next to each subject.

The automatic import process occurs once per day around midnight. If the Registrar releases a new term of courses, they will become available the following day.

Unpublish, Don't Delete!

If you delete a course that was automatically imported because its subject is tracked, it will be re-imported the following day automatically. If you don't want some of the courses that were imported to display, you can do any of the following:

1. Unpublish them.
2. Configure the course list block to display only the specific courses you want to show, rather than display all courses from a particular subject.
3. Don't import courses by subject, instead import specific courses you want using the method described below.

Importing Courses by Subject and Catalog Numbers

For programs and centers that are made up of a manual curation of courses from many subject areas, it's typically more practical to import the list of courses you want to display using this form instead of importing all courses for each subject. Use the "Import Courses by Subject and Catalog Numbers" form for this purpose.

Simply list out the subject and catalog numbers for the courses you want to import, and wait for processing to complete. NOTE: After clicking "Import courses", please be patient. The import can take several minutes.

Note that you can use both methods described for importing courses if you wish.

Syncing Updates from the Registrar

For all courses that were previously imported for the most recent term (using either method described above):

• Any changes made by the Registrar to the course will be reflected on your site automatically (processed once per day)
• The course will be automatically deleted if for whatever reason it was removed by the Registrar (processed once per day)

This ensures that your site does not display outdated or incorrect information.

Changes you've made to previously imported courses (described below) will not be lost during this process.

Adding Images, Categories, and an Additional Description

After courses have been imported, you can edit them by visiting the main content dashboard or courses dashboard.

Most fields cannot be modified because they are official course data from the Registrar and are automatically managed. However, you can control a few things:

• Add an Additional Description to provide more details about the course. This is available at the bottom of the course form and will be displayed after the official description on the course detail page.
• Add a Featured Image and control how it's displayed on the course detail page.
• Add a Course Category or Sitewide Category for the course, which can be used to better control what courses are displayed in Course List blocks.

Displaying an Archive of Previous Courses

Some websites may wish to display a list of past courses offered from previous terms.

If you're just getting started with courses, you can import the past 4 years worth of courses for the subjects you're interested in displaying. Refer to the section above on Importing Courses. Note that while you cannot import courses older than that, older courses you've already imported will not be automatically deleted.

To create an archive display, the recommended solution is to create a separate page for each academic year or each individual past term. On each of those pages, add a Course Offerings by Term List block (as described above) and configure it to display courses only from the term you're interested in.

If using a single page to represent both the Fall and Spring terms, create a block for each on the page.

These pages can be added to the menu on your site so visitors can easily navigate to the previous course offerings.