TracCloud: Course Lists
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Getting Started / Basics
Course Lists
Course Lists act as assigned sections or specialties in TracCloud, allowing you to determine which courses each of your consultants can assist with, and which courses are available in each center. Course Lists can additionally be assigned to availabilities as a form of section group, as seen towards the bottom of this article.
To manage your course lists, go to Other > Listings > Course Lists.
This will bring you to the Course Lists listing.
- Process Specialties allows you to re-scan for new courses that fall under the criteria of these lists. For example, if a list was created for Math 100 courses, but only sections 01 and 02 existed when it was created, you would need to re-scan to add the new 03 and 04 sections. This step is part of the TracCloud semester changeover process.
- The Hamburger Icon allows you to show all course lists after a search, print the list, or create a new list. Go ahead and click “New Course List” to begin.
After selecting New Course List, we’re brought to the following page, allowing us to name and customize our new list.
- Name will be what you’ll select when assigning this course list to your centers or consultants.
- Lock to SysAdmin will prevent non-sysadmin accounts from modifying this course list.
- Add New Course Item allows us to add a new subject query. We can be as specific as needed here, specifying up to the Subject, Course Number, Section Number, or Term Number, as well as faculty. For example, this allows us to create a course list of all ACTG250 courses, regardless of section/term, or simply all courses for writing center environments.
- Each course list item also has additional options, detailed below.
- Share will add this item to other selected course lists. More information on this can be found towards the bottom of this article.
- Delete will remove this item from the list.
- Toggle allows us to include/exclude the queried course(s). For example, you could create a course list of all MATH courses, and then create another Course Item for MATH 204 and set the toggle icon to off . This would result in the list containing all MATH courses except for 204.
- Toggle allows us to include/exclude the queried course(s). For example, you could create a course list of all MATH courses, and then create another Course Item for MATH 204 and set the toggle icon to off . This would result in the list containing all MATH courses except for 204.
- Add Other Course List allows us to include/exclude the contents of an entire other course list. Consultant course lists (designated with the sequence number in the name) should not be added to other course lists. Keep in mind that this only relates to the sections that the other course list contains, not the filter items from the copied course list. For example, if Course List A contains +BIOL* and Course List B contains +CHEM*,-BIOL*, and you assign B to A, then A would have all BIOL and CHEM sections despite B excluding them. This is because we are only adding the sections that B contains.
As an example, we’re going to create a course list for one of our consultants. This consultant can assist with all Accounting 100 courses, except for section 386. Here’s how we would write that out.
To start off, we’re including all ACTG 100 courses, ignoring section (wildcard), term, and faculty.
At this point, we can manually add another entry for section 386 and click the toggle icon to exclude the course. Alternatively, we can scroll down to view the sections that will be included in this list, where we can see section 386. We can immediately exclude this course by clicking the remove icon on the right-hand side.
Clicking the icon prompts us to choose how specific we want to be with this exclusion. For our scenario, we would select “Remove ACTG 100 386.”
This will add the new item to the list automatically, excluded by default.
Center course lists are used to filter availability searches and affect what section options are available when creating availabilities and booking appointments from the dashboard, in addition to consultant specialties. In your Center entry window, you will see the highlighted options below.
Other > Other Options > Profiles > [Your Profile] > Centers > [Your Center]
- Ignore consultant specialties for this center
During the kiosk login or appointment booking process, students are asked what subject they need assistance with. When you select a consultant, the list of available subjects/reasons is restricted based on what the consultant is assigned to. By checking this box, these specialties are ignored, and a student can choose any subject/reason/consultant combination, only restricted by what’s assigned to the center itself. Typically used for writing centers.
- Course List for this Center
This option controls the courses assigned to this center. If you have a Math center, you may want to assign a course list containing all MATH courses. A writing center may have all sections assigned, etc.
Managing course lists for consultants is exactly the same as centers, with one exception. Consultants have course lists by default. After you create a new consultant account (Other > Listings > Staff > [Consultant] > Scroll down to "Course List of Specialties"). The consultant's default course list will always be the last option in this drop-down menu, even if you haven't created it manually. After selecting their course list, you can click the Edit button to immediately start modifying it, at which point it's exactly the same as described above.
Another utility available for Course Lists is the ability to share items to other lists, effectively a way to make bulk changes to your specialties by adding or removing sections as needed. For example, if you recently added a non-enrolled course, this allows you to quickly assign it to everyone without editing every list individually.
First, use the selection buttons on the Course Lists listing to choose which Course Lists you want to share an item with.
Second, open a Course List that contains the item you want to share. Click the arrow button on that item, and you will be shown a confirmation window. Clicking "OK" here will immediately add that item to your selected Course Lists.
Another use for Course Lists is as section groups for availabilities. For example, if you have a tutor who is available for MATH, ACTG, and CHEM, but you want to create an availability for MATH and ACTG exclusively, you would need to use a course list. The ability to link course lists to availabilities must be enabled in global preferences first by going to Other > Other Options > Preferences > Search Availability Options > Additional Settings > Allow Course Lists to be assigned to availabilities.
Once enabled, a new search glass icon will be shown in availabilities. You will be able to choose any course list that is assigned to the same profile that the center of the availability is in. Course lists designated as "All Profiles" will not appear in this list.
