What's the purpose for a course requirement? Where is it used?
- In the case of colleges and transcripts, you may be thinking A-G Requirements. In addition to college requirements, your district may have a set of parameters and categories that students MUST meet in order to Graduate (ie. Student must have completed 30 credits of Math before graduating). This lesson will show you how to go about creating a Course Requirement to assist you in tracking student's grad and college entry requirements.
One important note on creating Course Requirement: Once created, site users will be able to use/choose the Course Requirement to print on transcripts and Grade reports. So be careful and remove unnecessary Course Requirement(s) that you may be testing.
Where to Start
1. Click Grades.
2. Click Course Requirements.
Course Requirements List
Click Add Requirement to add a Course Requirement.
Creating a new Course Requirement
1. Enter a name for the Requirement (i.e. Graduation Requirement, CSU/UC, etc).
2. Specify the academic year that this requirement will apply to.
3. Is this requirement a Grad Check? Choosing "Yes" will make this the default Grad Check requirement for the particular year (specified in #2) to be used in other areas of Illuminate (i.e. Grade Reports such as Graduation Requirement, Transcript printing, etc). There can only be one Graduation Check (Yes) per academic year.
4. Do you wish to include only high school courses? By "high school courses", we mean courses that were taken within grades 9-12. Choosing "No" will not limit your grade level range to only 9-12. For example, if a 6th grade student took a course that was included in this requirement, that course would satisfy this requirement.
5. Intermediate Credits Factor- This a grade level based rule that allows a user to set that the credits for a course be multipled by any numerical value you have input here. For example, if a Middle School student takes an Advanced Math course at the High School, and normally at the Middle School Math is only worth 2.5 credits, but at High School it is worth 5 credits, to give the student the full 5 credits, you would use this Course Factor tool. This will apply it to all courses attached to this requirement, not just one.
6. Include any grade marks you wish to exclude (Note: Failing grades are automatically excluded, so they will not show in the list to add)
7. Select the site you wish to apply this to (if not logged into a site already).
8. Click Create at the bottom of the page.
On individual student override can be applied to this Course Requirement on the Demographic Details page (Students > Search 2.0 > Search Student > Click on Student's name).
If the fields titled Met A-G Requirements Yes / No are populated on the Demographic Details page that status will be reported on SENR regardless of what is indicated for that student on the actual Course Requirement.
This is true for all students that have enrollment exited with an E230 exit code and Graduation Status = 100 or 106 or 108 and the Graduation Requirement year on the Demographic Details page is populated correctly.
Note: For proper CALPADS reporting of "CSU/UC Requirements met", the course requirement indicating this status MUST begin with the words CSU/UC Requirements.
Adding Categories to a Course Requirement
1. Click Grades.
2.Under Setup, click Course Requirements.
Course Requirements List
1. Click on the requirement name to edit it. (Then proceed to next step if adding Categories.)
2. To duplicate a requirement, click on the paper icon.
3. To delete a requirement, select the red trash can icon.
Adding Categories
1. Click Categories to add a category. For example, if the Course Requirement you are editing is the UC/CSU requirement, the categories you will be adding are the A-G requirements. You will create a category for each letter.
This will take you to the Categories list.
1. To create a new Category, select the Category tab and then New.
2. To edit a Category, click on the title of it.
3. To delete a Category, select the trash can icon.
Category Details
1. Name- Enter the name of the category. (i.e. A, G, English Language Arts, Math, Economics, Electives, etc).
2. Short Name- Enter an abbreviated name (i.e. A, G, ELA, etc).
3. How many credits are required to meet this category? Enter a numeric value here.
4. Is this a non-credit category? Checking this box will blank the Credits Required field in #3. Common use of this option is for a category in which it doesn't matter how much credit is received. As long as the student satisfies/completes at least one course defined in this category, the student will have met this category.
The following steps are rarely used, but are available if applicable:
5/6/7. Course Level Rule: This option is generally a filter. It sets a credit maximum for all courses that are designated an arbitrary level by the district. You can set it to filter by credits maximums under ___ course level number or credit maximums above ___ course level number.
8. Credits Per Term Rule: This option is basically setting a maximum credits per term for a course. For example, if you want to set a cap so students will only receive 5 credits per term for English, even if they took 10 credits worth of English classes.
9. Click Save.
Adding Courses to a Course Requirement Category
Reference the help document: 'Adding Courses to a Course Requirement Category'.