Working with Courses

If a college / school / discipline / organisational unit wishes to list its courses on its website, a number of steps must be followed.
And often, course directors wish to have short web addresses for their course pages.
Everything you need to know is outlined here: Configuring Course Sections in t4.

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Keywords fuel the website's course search but can also be used for Search Engine Optimisation.
All is explained in Keywords in T4 (SEO & Courses).

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Courses are subject to an extra workflow in the CMS.
This prevents you from approving the course - only designated approvers can do that.
Even if you are a designated course approver, you still cannot 'Save & Approve' courses - you have to click 'Save changes' and then approve it in a separate step.

To approve a single course, first install the 'Enable Approve' bookmarklet on your browser (by simply dragging it to your bookmarks bar). Then:

1. Edit the course content type - click 'Save changes' to save the changes.
2. You'll be returned to the section's content list.
   The content's 'Actions' -> 'Approve' option will be disabled. 
   Click the 'Enable Approve' bookmarklet to enable it.
3. Click 'Actions' -> 'Approve'.
   The approval screen will load, filtered to show that content only.
4. Click 'Actions' -> 'Approve'.
5. In the pop-up window, click 'Approve'

Alternatively, you can save changes to multiple courses and then approve all your updates by doing the following:

1. Click on the 'Content' option, on the left hand menu
2. Click on 'Approve Content'
3. Filter the list by your name (just above the list, on the right hand side)
4. Select all listed items (click the checkbox on the very right of the list's header)
5. Click 'Approve', at the bottom of the list.
6. In the pop-up window, click 'Approve'

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Simply log a ticket, via the ISS service desk, requesting it.
However, be warned - you will not simply be the approver of your own courses.  You will be an approver of all courses.
This means you will receive an email from t4 every time someone updates any course on the system.

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The Error

When editing a course, you may encounter the following error, when you try to save it:

This is because the course was last edited in version 7.4 of the CMS.  We are now on version 8.3, which is far less tolerant of editing rule breaches. 

Whenever you encounter this error, you know that someone put more than the maximum number of characters into one of the course fields.  Version 7 let them away with it but the latest version (which lets you know that your text is too long as soon as you move away from the field) expects to already know about any problem fields by the time you try to save.  If it hasn’t detected the problem (because you never went near the field that has the too-long text, while you were editing), the save fails.  At this point T4 knows that something has gone wrong, but it is not sure why – hence the strange error that says nothing. 

How to find the problem 

To identify the field(s) with too-long text, do the following: 

1. Edit your course content type  
   (If you’ve just encountered the error, you’re already editing it – so just scroll up to the top)
2. Click into the first field (‘name’)
3. Click into each field in turn - do this until you notice the background of one of the fields going light-red, when you leave it. You’ve found a field that contains more text than there is space for.
4. Correct the problem (for more information on this, see below).
5. Continue to click into each field until you get to the bottom (just in case there are more errors)  
6. Save and approve your changes. 

Fixing the problem 

Now that the problem field has gone light-red, you’ll notice some red text at the bottom.  E.g.: 

This tells you the maximum number of characters for that field. 
Reduce the text length to below the limit – the red background colour will disappear as soon as you do. 

Tip: If you wish to count the characters quickly, install the bookmarklet we provide on your browser (see item #5 on this list: https://www.universityofgalway.ie/t4/bookmarklets/#useful)  

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Course Field Max Lengths

Character length includes the characters in the text and additional HTML characters used for formatting.  For example, if we look at the heading above:

Visible characters would have a count of 24 characters with spaces included - 'Course Field Max Lengths'

The count including HTML characters used for formatting is actually 33. - <h3>Course Field Max Lengths</h3>

Course Template 1 – Undergraduate / Postgraduate Taught / Adult Education

• Name - Max size 80 
• List title - Max size 400 
• Main title - Max size 400 
• College - Max size 2048 
• School - Max size 400 
• Fees: EU - Max size 80 
• Fees: Non EU - Max size 80 
• Fees: Student levy - Max size 80 
• Fees: Tuition - Max size 80 
• Fees: Student Contribution - Max size 80 
• Fees: extra - Max size 800 
• Course type - Max size 2048 
• Keywords - Max size 800 
• Category- Max size 2048 
• CAO - Max size 80 
• PAC code - Max size 200 
• Entry requirements - Max size 3200 
• Additional requirements - Max size 2000 
• Closing date - Max size 200 
• ECTS weighting - Max size 160 
• NFQ level - Max size 160 
• Award - Max size 400
• Next start date - Max size 160 
• Duration - Max size 200
• Average intake - Max size 160
• QQI/FET/FETAC Places - Max size 20
• entry points - Max size 80
• A-levels equiv - Max size 80
• Year for points -Max size 2048
• Mode of study - Max size 2048
• Course overview - Max size 8000
• Course outline - Max size 15000
• Course outline post-modules - Max size 5000
• Further education - Max size 2000
• Applications and selections - Max size 4000
• Who teaches this course - Max size 5800
• Find out more - Max size 2000
• Requirements and assessment - Max size 2000
• Recognition of Prior Learning - Max size 1000
• Career opportunities - Max size 8000
• Display 2nd tab - Max size 160 (No longer used)
• Who’s suited to this course - Max size 8000
• Learning outcomes - Max size 8000
• Transferable Skills - Max size 2000
• Work placement - Max size 9000
• Study abroad - Max size 8000
• Related student organisations - Max size 8000
• Internal Course Code - Max size 10 

Course Template 2 – Research / Structured 

• Name - Max size 80 
• List title - Max size 2000 
• Main title - Max size 2000
• College - Max size 2048
• School - Max size 400
• Fees: EU - Max size 80
• Fees: non EU - Max size 80 
• Fees: Extra - Max size 800 
• Keywords - Max size 1600 
• Course overview - Max size 8000
• Find out more - Max size 2000 
• PAC code - Max size 400
• Programmes available - Max size 2000
• Entry requirements - Max size 2000
• Areas of interest - Max size 8000
• Researcher profiles - Max size 8000
• Current project - Max size 2000
• Show 2nd tab - Max size 2048 (No longer used)
• Display 2nd tab -Max size 160 (No longer used)
• Who’s suited to this course - Max size 8000
• Learning outcomes -ax size 2048
• Work placement - Max size 8000
• Career opportunities - Max size 8000
• Study abroad - Max size 8000
• Related student organisations - Max size 8000
• Associated Body Type - Max size 30
• Associated Body Info - Max size 2048
• Internal Course Code - Max size 10
• Research Theme - Max size 100 

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Edit the course

Scroll to the bottom,

Add the course's internal course code (Akari programme code) into the 'Internal Course Code' field.

Save your changes 

Approve the course (See 'Why can't I Save and Approve', above)

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The majority of courses will display the modules for every year of the course, once you fill in its 'Internal Course Code'.

But some courses were entered into the curriculum management system as 2 separate programmes, presumably because, at one time, it was possible to graduate with a level 7 qualification after 2 years, or a level 8 qualification after 4 years.

This is why the course content type has an optional 'Internal Course Code 2' field, at the very bottom.  This is where you would add the course code for the programme that outlines year 3 and 4 of that degree course.

For example, the Bachelor of Science (Biopharmaceutical Chemistry) required its 'Internal Course Code' to be set to 'BPC1', to include year 1 and 2 information, and for the optional 'Internal Course Code 2' field to be set to 'BPC2', so that year 3 and 4's modules would also be shown.

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Normally, this is because the curriculum manager has not released the data to the web, or else the periodic import of curriculum data, which happens twice a day, has not read in the change yet.

Next-year's Data

Most edits you make to curriculum data, in Akari, will take effect next year - your edits will not be made live (by Akari) until mid-summer, when the data rollover happens.  See below for full information on this data rollover process.

The data that Akari is currently publishing is read by our middleware daily. This is so that the website will import any of the small changes that Akari lets you publish during the academic year (as far as we are aware, this is limited to Module Learning Outcomes, Recommended reading, and Module Teachers).

Time-lag

Curriculum information is read by our middleware every day - but uploading this large amount of data to the web is resource intensive.  Because the data changes so little and so infrequently, throughout the year, this resource-intensive task is only run once a week - timed to have the updated information available every Monday by 9am.

The Akari Data Rollover

Modifications to the curriculum information are always kept on hold, by Akari, until the registry office rolls over to the latest Information, each summer. 

This rollover has 3 steps: 

1. The curriculum team decide on a cut-off dates for edits to the curriculum each year.
   At that point in time, edits are no longer possible.
   
   
2. ISS import the upcoming academic year's curriculum information into the student management system (Quercus).
   
   
3. Once step 2 has completed, the curriculum team complete the rollover of Akari data.  All changes, made in the past year, are now made public by Akari (so that the published data will, once again, match Quercus' ruleset). 
   Those changes also become visible via the Akari API, which is queried regularly by the middleware that automatically imports module information into course pages.

Following this data rollover, any edits to curriculum information, made within Akari, will not publish - they will be saved as a future version of the content and will only become visible when next year's rollover happens.

Why have a data rollover?

This periodic data rollover is due to the need for the updated curriculum information to be imported into Quercus (the University's student management system - which needs to know the exact course details so that it can store exam results and also work out whether each student can progress into the next year of their course, or graduate).

It is important for these two systems to have the same information for the entire academic year.  This is to avoid confusion by ensuring Akari describes the current courses exactly as Quercus is configured.  With the rollover system in place, no changes ,intended for the next academic year, will be published by Akari until the current academic year is over.

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