- Academic Group
- See Faculty.
- Academic Organisation
- See School.
- Active Course
- A courses marked in the Course Catalogue as being able to be scheduled in the future. Once at least one class has been created in a particular term, a course becomes a Scheduled Course (as well as remaining active).
- Activity
- A kind of learning and teaching activity or regular event that students may need to register for. Previously known as component. Activities must be recorded in the Course Catalogue before they can be used in scheduling.
- Activity Group
- One or more associated activities for a course. The classes that a student enrols in must be from a single Activity Group, one class for each activity.
For example, the course FIRE1243 Playing with Matches is offered in both on-campus and distance mode. The first Activity Group has a Lecture activity (one class) and a Tutorial (several classes). The second Activity Group just has a Distance activity class. A student enrols in either the Distance class or the Lecture and one Tutorial.
Activity Group Activity Classes 1Lecture
Tutorial1
1 or more2Distance1
Activity Groups replace the older concept of Class Associations. They are currently created and maintained on the Class Details page. - Administrator
- Either the person who is authorised to maintain classes for a course, or a new Staff Role to allow more than one such person. A user whose staff ID is linked to a class through either field is authorised to make changes to any class for that course and term.
The primary administrator is set on the Class Details page, while more general staff roles (including instructors) are set on the Meeting Details page. - Allow Timetable Clash
- A checkbox on the Meeting Details page that, if ticked, allows a student to enrol in a class that clashes with another class (which need not have the checkbox ticked).
- Associated Classes
- Alternative term for Class Associations, now called Activity Groups.
- Auto-Enrol
- The ability to link one class to another, so that enrolment in the second class is implied by choosing the first. This is now used only in special situations, such as where there are more than three kinds of Activity in an Activity Group. Auto-Enrol links can only be maintained using the Student Information Management System (SiMs).
- Campus
- A subdivision of the University, normally geographically based, where staff are concentrated and many learning and teaching activities are conducted. See also Location.
- Capacity
- The maximum number of students who can be enrolled in a class without overriding the set limit. Overrides can only be applied to staff - students cannot self-enrol in a class where the number of enrolments is greater than or equal to the capacity. See also Room Capacity.
- Career
- An attribute of a student, course or class indicating the general kind of award that the student or cohort is proceeding towards. At UNSW the career types are Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Research and Non-award.
- Catalogue Number
- A four-digit suffix identifying a course, along with its Subject Area.
- Class
- An instance of an Activity for a scheduled course in a particular term. Each student enrols in at least one class, and possibly more, so that they register for each activity in a particular Activity Group.
- Class Association
- Obsolete term for Activity Group.
- Class Notes
- Either free text or predefined informational notes assigned to a class. There can be multiple notes. They are maintained on the Supplementary page.
- Class Number
- A numeric identifer assigned by the system when a class is created. The number is unique within a term, and corresponding classes in different terms may be assigned completely different numbers. Although displayed on many of the pages, they are mostly for information only. Students do not need to know them to enrol in a class. See also Section ID.
- Class Section
- Another name for Section ID.
- Class Status
- The conditions under which a class can allow enrolment. There are four status values:
- Active - ready to accept enrolment (unless full).
- Stop Enrol - disabled, either temporarily for maintenance, or as a permanent status to indicate the class is closed.
- Tentative - may be activated in the future, presumably if there is sufficient demand.
- Cancelled - no longer being offered.
Only Active classes (shown as Open) are visible to students on the myUNSW Enrolment Basket website. Active and Stop Enrol classes (shown as On Hold) are visible on the Online Handbook/Class Timetable website. All classes are visible on the Class Utilisation website. Only empty classes can be cancelled. Class status can be changed on the Class Details page (for a single class), or on the Class Management page (for any combination of classes). - Class Type
- For historical reasons, the enrolment process uses the concept of an Enrolment class type and a Non-Enrolment (also called Related) class type. Each Activity Group must have one Activity all of whose classes are of type Enrolment, and optionally other activities whose classes are all Non-Enrolment. The most important difference is that only enrolment-type classes can have any Reserve Capacity constraints.
- Colour Highlights
- Whenever current enrolments are compared to a limit, either class Capacity or a facility capacity, the browser will show the relevant value in a box with a low-saturation coloured background.
The colours are light green for classes less than half full, light yellow for classes between 50% and under 80% full, a darker yellow-brown for classes between 80% and under 100% full, and a light red for classes that are full or overfull.
The presentation is particularly effective on pages that show all classes for a course, such as the Class Management page and the separate Class Utilisation site, which uses the same scheme. - Component
- Obsolete term for Activity.
- Consent
- Whether a student is able to self-enrol. The values shown on myUNSW are None (students can self-enrol) and Required (students are unable to self-enrol).
- Course Administrator
- See Administrator.
- Enrolment Class
- See Class Type.
- Enrolments
- The number of students currently enrolled in a class.
- Facility ID
- An identifier, the same as that used by CATS (with a tiny number of exceptions) to identify a bookable room. The ID is usually made up of three parts, separated by hyphens:
- Campus (currently K for Kensington, P for Paddington and Z for ADFA).
- Building code, often grid-based.
- Room number, using the Facility Department's building plan numbering scheme.
Facility IDs can be entered directly, or populated from the adjacent drop-down (after pressing Refresh).
Other codes are also used, especially SEESCHOOL. - Faculty
- The major academic grouping of course ownership (Academic Group in Sims). The faculty assigned to a class is inherited from the Course Catalogue and can't be changed.
- Instruction Mode
- How the class is delivered to students. Defaults to In Person, but a range of alternative values is also provided. Set on the Class Details page.
- Instructor
- A Staff Role: either Primary or Secondary. Both kinds are authorised to update the Class Schedule.
- Location
- A learning centre or region where students are located, usually geographically based. Each Campus may have several locations.
- Meeting
- An regularly occuring event. Each class can have any number of meetings. Apart from Administrator, staff are assigned to meetings.
- Meeting Room Capacity
- The size of a facility, shown (and labelled simply Capacity) on the Meeting List and Meeting Details pages. If shown on a light red background, the class currently has more enrolments than the room will accommodate, which violates OH&S requirements.
- Meeting Type
- Whether a meeting is every week, or every odd or even week between the start and end dates. Set on the Meeting Details page.
- Non-Enrolment Class
- See Class Type.
- Required Room Capacity
- See Room Capacity.
- Reserve Capacity
- The ability for an Enrolment Class to have some of its Capacity reserved for students meeting certain criteria. There can be any number of reserve capacity records. Each one requires a starting date, an enrolment requirement code, and a number of reservations.
When a student attempts to enrol, each record is examined in the order given. If a student meets the specified requirement, and the number of free places is positive, the enrolment is registered against this reserve capacity record as well as against the total enrolment in the class. If no enrolment requirements are met, or matching ones are full, the student can enrol only if there are some unreserved free places left.
The usual enrolment requirement codes to use are of the form 20PPPP, where PPPP is any program code, and 210000, which selects students who have not yet completed a course. - Room Capacity
- A placeholder Capacity indicator, which has no direct effect on functionality. It is typically (though not reliably) used to hold the eventual capacity of a class during the period when its capacity is artificially limited as a means of spreading enrolments more evenly. Can be changed on the Class Details or Class Management pages.
The room capacity doesn't necessarily indicate the size of any room assigned to Meetings of the class. Such capacities are shown on the Meeting List and Meeting Details pages, - Scheduled Course
- An Active Course that has at least one class scheduled for a specified term. The Course List page normally shows only scheduled courses, unless the Show All Active Courses checkbox is ticked.
- School
- The academic grouping responsible for day-to-day operational management of a course and its classes. It is known as Academic Organisation in Sims. The label is intended to reflect the most common kind of organisation, even though departments or faculties may also act in this role.
- Section ID
- An identifier assigned by the maintainer of a class, to distinguish it from other classes for the course. It consists of four symbols, each of which is either an upper-case letter or a digit.
Conventions have been adopted for naming sections where there are large numbers of classes, and especially when the course has more than one Activity:- Lectures: use a prefix of one or more zeroes to ensure prominence at the beginning of a list ordered by section. For example, 0001 (single class); 0001 0002 (streams); 0A 0B 0C 0D (streams); 00UG 00PG (career-based enrolment).
- Small-group classes: many schools prefer to encode the starting hour of a class in the section, using a letter to represent the day of the week (M T W H F), two digits for the hour, and a distinguishing letter suffix, normally A B C.... Where classes are offered in alternate weeks, the suffix D for odd and E for even is also used.
Examples: M11 T09A T09B W16X H15C F12D F12E - Web or distance classes: usually a clearly distinguisable value such as WEB or DIST.
The Section can be changed on the Class Management page, even after enrolments occur, but care should be taken if the course uses Auto-Enrol functionality (this is now rarely required). - Session
- A teaching period within a Term. Session codes have two (possibly later, three) characters. Within a term, the session has standard dates for start, end and census. These can be varied for a class using the Non-Standard Date functionality. The session cannot be changed once enrolments occur.
- Staff Role
- A means of associating staff with a class, and thereby to a course, Staff IDs are entered on the Meeting Details page. The original use of this functionality was to assign Instructors or Teaching Assistants, but has been extended to Tutor and Administrator.
All staff except for Tutors are able to modify any class for a course and term for which they have been assigned (not just a particular class). It is usual to assign staff roles for the most general class such as a lecture. - Subject Area
- A discipline code, consisting of four upper-case letters. All courses have a Subject Area and Catalogue Number.
- Teaching Assistant
- A Staff Role that is authorised to update the Class Schedule.
- Term
- A subdivision of the academic year, currently into one of three overlapping periods. It has a four-digit identifier that maintains strict chronological order. For terms since 2000, the code consists of a '5', the last two digits of the year, and then either '1' for summer, '4' for the first semester and '7' for the second semester. For example, 5084 is Semester 1, 2008. See also Session.
- Tutor
- A new Staff Role, assumed to be teaching only. Tutors are not allowed to update the Class Schedule unless separately authorised.
More Information
For assistance with any of the functions available to staff from the 'Academic Admin' tab on myUNSW, please contact Academic Administration.
